S.A. to expand virus testing
Asymptomatic patients will be offered free COVID-19 tests starting Monday
The city of San Antonio’s COVID-19 testing sites will begin offering free tests Monday to people who have no symptoms of the virus.
Currently, asymptomatic people whowant to be tested must visit a doctor’s office or a private lab. But the city is expanding its testing for the first time to patients showing no symptoms. The aim is to screen far more people and thereby reduce the spread of the virus.
The expanded testing was made possible through a partnership with the new nonprofit Community Labs, chaired by San Antonio philanthropist Graham Weston, and BioBridge Global, the nonprofit parent company of the South Texas Blood and Tissue Bank.
The newly created lab will be able to test up to 12,000 asymptomatic people a day, Weston said.
“This is one of the first labs of its kind in the United States,” he said Friday during the city’s daily coronavirus briefing. “And it’s going to be a very fast lab. We’re going to get our results back in less than 19 hours.”
Initially, the testing for asymptomatic patients will be limited to certain times.
On Monday, the tests will be offered at Cuellar Community Center, 5626 San Fernando St., from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. only.
On Tuesday, they will be available at Ramirez Community Center, 1011 Gillette Blvd., from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. only.
On Wednesday, asymptomatic people can get tested at Freeman Coliseum, 3201 E. Houston St., between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.
People without symptomsmust schedule an appointment by calling 830-391-8559.
The three testing sites will expand their screening capacity for asymptomatic people, offering daily testing starting Oct. 12.
The tests are nasal PCR tests authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Weston, the former CEO and chairman of Rackspace Technology, was among a group of philanthropists who formedCommunity Labs with the goal of ramping up testing. The nonprofit aims to test people who gather in group settings, such as schools or businesses.
The nonprofit has been running a pilot testing effort in the
Somerset Independent School District in rural Southwest Bexar County. Nearly 1,000 students were tested in the past week, Weston said.
“We want to be able to send kids back to school and then send their parents back to work,” he said.
Weston began working on the endeavor after he caught the coronavirus in March from his 22-year-old son, who never showed any symptoms. Weston refers to asymptomatic carriers as “silent spreaders” of the virus.
“About half of the people who get COVID get it from people who don’t have symptoms at that time,” Weston said.
“There’s no pain, no need to wince,” he said of the test. “It’s very easy to do.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said at the briefing that the coronavirus continues on a low trajectory in San Antonio and Bexar County with only 103 new cases reported Friday.
No new deaths were reported.
Since the pandemic began seven months ago, 58,039 Bexar County residents have tested positive for the virus. Among them, 1,428 have active cases. The city’s recovery rate stood at 97 percent as of Sept. 14.
The local death toll remains at 1,138.
Hospitalization numbers dropped below 200 on Friday for the first time in several months. Nirenberg said 196 patients who had tested positive for the virus were being treated in San Antonio hospitals, including 29 new admissions in the past 24 hours.
That’s far below the peak of 1,267 hospitalizations recorded on July 13.
Among those currently hospitalized, 76 were in intensive care and 31 were on ventilators.
Around 12 percent of staffed patient beds remain available at San Antonio hospitals, while 71 percent of ventilators are ready for use.
Daily ambulance transports of patients with probable cases of COVID-19 have dropped well below the peak of 63 recorded on June 30, Metro Health statistics show.
In Comal County, where NewBraunfels is the county seat, seven newcases of the virus were reported Friday. That county’s death toll remains at 116.
Nearly 3,500 Comal County residents have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began in March. Around 93 percent of them have recovered.
More than 750,000 Texans have tested positive in the past seven months. Nearly 16,000 have died statewide.
That includes nearly 3,000 new cases reported across Texas on Friday, along with 72 more deaths.
Around 89 percent of Texans who tested positive for the virus had recovered as of Friday, according to numbers posted on the state health department’s COVID-19 dashboard. That amounts to almost 675,000 people.
Nearly 70,000 Texans still have active cases of the virus, the dashboard indicated.
BexarCounty ranks third among Texas counties in reported COVID-19 fatalities. Only Harris and Hidalgo counties have reported more.
Two Texas counties have reported no coronavirus cases at all — Loving County in far west Texas and King County, east of Lubbock.