S.A. area is seen in second wave of COVID-19
Officials warned Thursday that San Antonio is entering a second wave of COVID-19 earlier than expected, identified through alarming large increases in the number of people testing positive for the disease and in hospital admissions.
Dawn Emerick, director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, pleaded with the public to resume social distancing practices, wash hands frequently and wear face coverings — especially indoors.
“We are letting down our guard, and we are not adhering to some of these things that we’ve been preaching about for the last four months. So there’s a sense of urgency right now,” Emerick said during Thursday’s city-county novel coronavirus briefing, now held twice a week instead of daily.
The numbers of confirmed cases and people hospitalized with the disease in Bexar County are growing at disconcerting rates, officials said, reporting 192 new cases Thursday, following 180 on Tuesday and 135 Wednesday.
“Something is happening in our community,” Emerick said. “It’s not just San Antonio. It is also some of the other larger cities in Texas as well.
“Our peers across the state are also seeing a very large increase in those positives,” she added.
Although a surge in cases that began last week was partly due to a backlog of test results, Emerick said, “the last three to four days, that’s not the case.”
“We are entering a second wave,” she said, attributing the trend to a relaxation in preventive practices since Memorial Day weekend, when many attended large gatherings without benefit of masks or social distancing.
The phased-in reopening of businesses also has contributed, she said.
“Take this serious,” she said, emphasizing the need to follow health guidelines. “No. 1: face coverings. We’ve talked about that
over and over and over again. It’s the best way of mitigating the spread, in addition to the social distancing. We are definitely seeing more people not wearing masks. This is not healthy.”
In answer to a question, she said it would take “about another week” to know whether recent protests downtown will contribute to a continued rise in the virus. People attending protests should wear masks and attempt to maintain social distancing as much as possible.
Thursday’s new cases raised the Bexar County total to 3,840, up from 3,648 reported Wednesday.
There were two more fatalities from the coronavirus reported Thursday, raising the death toll to 82, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. One was a Hispanic man in his 70s and the other an Anglo man in his 80s.
Nirenberg said 122 people were in the hospital Thursday, up from 108 the day before. There were 54 in intensive care, up from 50 Wednesday. But only 25 were using
ventilators to breathe, down from 28 the previous day.
Those hospital figures are worrisome, officials noted.
“I always watch the hospital numbers more than I do anything else, and that’s given me some real concern,” County Judge Nelson Wolff said. “We need to be a lot more careful about wearing our masks, social distancing, about cleaning our hands.”
Emerick noted that children who are younger than 2 shouldn’t be wearing face coverings at any time because there’s a risk of suffocating.
The latest figures were reported as the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio Zoo, Witte Museum and Splashtown San Antonio have begun phased-in reopening.
Schlitterbahn water park in New Braunfels is set to resume operations Saturday, with precautions in place. Some resort hotels have reopened; others have begun taking reservations for July.
The mayor said San Antonioarea residents proved they can contain the spread of COVID-19 when the infection and hospitalization rates were lower in April and early May.
“We’ve done it before. We can do it again,” Nirenberg said.
One of the challenges, officials said, is that the city and county no longer can issue citations to people not wearing a face mask, bandanna or other covering.
Wolff applauded Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to reopen the economy, but said it was a mistake for the governor to ban local jurisdictions from giving tickets for violations of mandatory facecovering rules. That forced cities and counties to turn the requirement to wear masks into a recommendation.
“If he had not done that, I don’t think we would be where we are today,” Wolff said.
Another challenge, one similar to those in other cities, is that people testing positive for COVID-19 are not returning the health district’s calls, which makes it difficult for health officials to conduct case investigations and contact
tracing, Emerick said.
“We can’t stop this disease from spreading if we’re not in partnership with you,” she said.
Emerick urged those who are sick to stay home and urged everyone to stay away from nursing homes, where members of the community’s most vulnerable population live.
Nirenberg admonished the public to help contain the disease, as it did weeks earlier through voluntary actions, so the governor does not have to re-institute stay-at-home measures or other rules.
Abbott has said he would in a second wave.
“We don’t want to have go back in restrictions,” the mayor said. “It would be devastating economically and health-wise for us to do that.”
Testing for COVID-19 now is available to everyone, with or without symptoms. People over 65 and with underlying health risks such as hypertension or diabetes are encouraged to be tested.
For more information about those locations, call 311 or the city’s COVID-19 hotline, 210-2075779, or email Covid-19@sanantonio.gov.