Name: ‘A fire smoldering’: Coronavirus risk lessens in San Antonio
Brand: expressnews.com
SKU: expressnews-com-34
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

‘A fire smoldering’: Coronavirus risk lessens in San Antonio

preview

To keep our community informed of the most urgent coronavirus news, our&nbsp; are free to read.&nbsp;&nbsp;is available to subscribers. Subscribe now for full access and to&nbsp;Signs that San Antonio’s coronavirus surge is slowly abating continued Monday, as officials reported improvements in key measures of the outbreak’s severity and downgraded the virus’ overall risk in the community to moderate.Bexar County recorded 70 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total local infections to 44,122 since the start of the pandemic. The seven-day daily average of new cases has fallen to 166, and the doubling time has increased to 40 days.But officials cautioned that at 11.3 percent, the positivity rate — the proportion of people tested who are found to have COVID-19 — indicates that the virus still has a hold on the county. Mayor Ron Nirenberg said that figure “is still well above where we want it to be,” which is 5 percent or less.“That means there is a fire smoldering outside, and if we add kindling to it, it can get out of control,” he said during the daily coronavirus briefing.Officials reported another 19 residents have died from the virus, bringing the local death toll to 617.On ExpressNews.com:Some of those deaths occurred as far back as June 28 but were only recently verified by the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District as being a COVID-related death of a resident. State health officials, who count coronavirus deaths based on death certificates, reported 892 deaths for Bexar County as of Sunday, a number local officials have said erroneously includes non-residents, among other errors.Local officials are still investigating 275 deaths included in the state count.For the third week in a row, coronavirus hospitalizations in the San Antonio area declined. On Monday, 603 people were being treated in area hospitals for COVID, a number that included 40 new admissions but was down nine from the previous day. About half as many coronavirus patients are in local hospitals compared with mid-July, when hospitalizations related to the pandemic peaked.About 18 percent of staffed hospital beds were available, up from less than 10 percent at the height of the surge.Even with those improvements, officials still characterize local hospitals as under high stress.On Monday, 267 COVID patients were in intensive care units, including 188 breathing with the support of a ventilator. Both were minor declines from Sunday.On ExpressNews.com:“Things are getting better,” said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff.He and Nirenberg stressed that the steady improvements could still be stymied if masking and physical distancing efforts became too relaxed.Nirenberg said he understood that residents, particularly parents of school-age children, may be frustrated with staying at home. But he worried that those understandable emotions could lead to complacency.With a still-high positivity rate, San Antonio’s coronavirus numbers could quickly “mushroom out of control” again, he said. He asked students and parents to be patient during this period.“It’s taken a Herculean effort on everyone’s part to get these numbers to start moving in the right direction, and it seemed like it was as slow as molasses to get to that point,” Nirenberg said. “This is not the way we wanted to start school. It’s not the way we wanted the fall to play out at all.”Lauren Caruba covers health care and medicine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Lauren, . | Twitter:

To keep our community informed of the most urgent coronavirus news, our&nbsp; are free to read.&nbsp;&nbsp;is available to subscribers. Subscribe now for full access and to&nbsp;Signs that San Antonio’s coronavirus surge is slowly abating continued Monday, as officials reported improvements in key measures of the outbreak’s severity and downgraded the virus’ overall risk in the community to moderate.Bexar County recorded 70 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total local infections to 44,122 since the start of the pandemic. The seven-day daily average of new cases has fallen to 166, and the...

‘A fire smoldering’: Coronavirus risk lessens in San Antonio

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS