The curfew is one weapon Wolff and Nirenberg have in COVID-19 war.

Curfew a part of effort by Nirenberg, Wolff to prevent major virus outbreak

The decision to impose an overnight curfew through the long holiday weekend was a rare show of local control over the pandemic response, which often has been stymied by Gov. Greg. Abbott.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff have chafed under Abbott’s refusal to allow local leaders to enact measures aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 — authority they had in the early days of the pandemic but that the governor took away.

With the pandemic on track to take a brutal turn this winter, the local leaders are seeking to find any tools at their disposal to prevent a major outbreak that could overwhelm the hospital system, as it has in El Paso.

After searching for ways to prevent large gatherings of unmasked people at unsafe distances, which was expected by many over the Thanksgiving weekend with many people visiting from out of town, Nirenberg andwolff cameup with the curfew on the eve of the holiday.

But local officials are all too aware it’s only a brief respite.

“It’s very difficult when our hands are tied,” District 4 Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia said. “But we have to continue being the ones who at least say, ‘Wear your mask, try to stay 6 feet apart, don’t congregate in small areas.’”

Nirenberg and Wolff believe their strongest weapon is moral persuasion: direct, daily appeals to the public to behave responsibly in the face of the pandemic.

The twomen have pleaded with residents to wear masks, avoid large gatherings and keep at least 6 feet from other people, especially during Thanksgiving and the winter holidays. Officials only can hope people heed that advice.

“We cannot stop this virus if you don’t change your behaviors,” Nirenberg says at his daily televised briefings on the pandemic. “If you don’t heed the warnings this Thanksgiving holiday, you or your loved ones could be spending Christmas in the hospital. That’s just the facts.”

Nirenberg has vowed to bolster the city’s efforts in another area where it still has authority: cracking down on businesses and residents who flout rules on maskwearing, social distancing and

other provisions of Abbott’s emergency orders.

It’s an approach the governor has recommended to local leaders when they’ve grumbled about not having enough power to fight the virus.

The city has added 10 code officers to the ranks of those tackling enforcement of COVID rules, bringing the number to 30. That’s enough to conduct up to 350 business inspections each week, officials say.

Before this week, city officials opted not to take an aggressive approach to enforcement. They said they preferred to encourage voluntary compliance rather than resort to coercive measures — but the recent rise in cases and hospitalizations have made such a strategy unsustainable.

“I think the approach we tookwhile it wasnot surging was exactly the right step to take,” said Colleen Bridger, interim director of the Metropolitan Health District. “The focus was on education — helping people understand why they needed to do this. Now that we’re surging, what you’re hearing is that we are going to take a more proactive approach, which includes being quicker to have some of that cause-and-effect happen.”

Since the virus reached San Antonio in March, the city has issued 295 citations to residents and businesses for violating coronavirus orders. That’s out of more than 3,000 violations city enforcement officers have tallied since March.

That approach has occasionally flustered City Council members. Earlier this month, the St. Anthony Hotel hosted a wedding reception for about 150 people, most of whom weren’t wearing masks or keeping the required distance from each other.

The Police Department received three calls about the Nov. 14 wedding — including from Rocha Garcia, who called the enforcement hotline after a constituent whose husband was working at the reception told her about the scene.

Officers told wedding guests to wear their masks while indoors, a report on the city’s website says. But no warning or citation was issued.

“We’ve got to get creative in how to get people to make sure that they comply,” Rocha Garcia said. “Is it shaming? How do we do that? Is that what it’s going to take? I don’t knowwhat it will take but we have to do something.”

Under Abbott’s emergency orders, officers first must issue warnings before they can write a ticket for no more than $250. The city has issued 108 fines for mask-wearing violations since June, when Wolff’s mask order — later superseded by Abbott’s — took effect.

“Now do you really think that policeman’s going to find the same guy that he warned before?” Wolff said.

Often, that means only those who don’t immediately don a mask when confronted will be fined, City Manager Erik Walsh said.

But Walsh noted that the city doesn’t have to give warnings before it cites a business for a violation.

“With cases rapidly rising, we are nowstepping up enforcement and will issue citations immediately to businesses that are not requiring the proper safety protocols,” Walsh said.

The city also can shut down businesses that repeatedly violate emergency orders, but rarely has done so since the pandemic began in March.

On Tuesday, officials revoked the certificate of occupancy for XTC Cabaret, a Northeast Side strip club, after it had received six citations for flouting rules on mask-wearing and social distancing — the third time the city has taken such a step.

The city doesn’t have set guidelines for the timing of shutting down businesses that routinely thumb their noses at the orders.

Officials come to that decision “when the business deliberately continues to violate the order after repeated attempts to ensure compliance,” city spokesman Jeff Coyle said.

Outside of this weekend’s curfew, Wolff has some leeway to close down a small number of bars if the virus gets too intense.

If the local positivity rate — the percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive — remains at 10 percent or above for at least two weeks, Wolff can shut down bars that don’t earn more than half of their receipts from food sales. That rate hit 10 percent Monday.

Before they handed down the curfew, Wolff and Nirenberg didn’t seem eager to imposetighter restrictions on bars and restaurants — whether that means limiting occupancy or forbidding them to open at all.

Some restaurant owners and servers groused Wednesday about the short notice for the curfew, but Coyle said they had 30 hours.

Much of the local spread of the virus stems from “private and social gatherings,” Nirenberg said in a statement Monday.

The curfew affects gatherings in private homes, too, although how that would be checked wasn’t immediately clear.

“As I have said numerous times, it is behavior — not specific locations — that continues the spread of the virus,” Nirenberg said.

Most new local cases of

COVID-19 stem from household gatherings of family and friends, in contrast with early on in the pandemic, whenmuch of the transmission occurred in bars, restaurants and gyms, said Dr. Jason Bowling, an infectious disease specialist at UT Health San Antonio.

But as the virus spreads, the chance of contracting it in any setting increases, Bowling said.

“Every place at this point in San Antonio poses a risk,” Bowling said.

Nirenberg and Wolff aren’t eager to get into a legal battle with Abbott should they feel compelled to enact greater restrictions.

In defiance of Abbott, El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego imposed an emergency order to shut down businesses amid a punishing surge in the virus there — only to have it struck down in court.

Wolff supported Samaniego’s effort, he said, but he wouldn’t try something like it unless the situation in Bexar County was similarly dire.

“It would probably take a situation similar to El Paso, I guess,” Wolff said.

Policymakers are kicking around less extreme measures. One idea pursued by District 7 Councilwoman Ana Sandoval, who chairs the council Community Health and Equity Committee, is to help restaurants create outdoor dining areas as other cities have.

“We would dramatically reduce the risk of transmission if we moved a significant amount of dining outdoors,” Sandoval said. “I think that’s worth exploring because people do want to go eat at restaurants.”

Officials also are continuing on-the-ground communication efforts to spread information about howto stay safe. Though cases are on the rise in some neighborhoods on the West and South sides, other areas hit hard early in the pandemic have seen case numbers drop in recent weeks.

That could reflect the efforts of Metro Health workers and council aides, who went door-to-door to distribute literature promoting COVID-19-SAFE practices and also targeted residents on social media with safety tips.

But Rocha Garcia, who represents the Southwest Side, worried people would gather for Thanksgiving despite the warnings. She knows the pain that COVID-19 can bring — six cousins on her father’s side of the family died from the virus.

Her family now suspects they were infected at a Father’s Day gathering.

“It hasn’t happened yet to your family? It doesn’t mean that it won’t happen in your family,” Rocha Garcia cautioned.

Curfew Q and A

Q: What are the hours of the curfew?

A: 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. It started Thursday night and lasts till Monday morning.

Q: I have to work later than 10 p.m. Will I be in violation of the curfew?

A: No. The curfew prohibits social gatherings after 10 p.m. Driving to and from work is not a violation.

Q: Does the curfew apply only to outside gatherings?

A: No. Residents are prohibited from gathering with any others not from their household after 10 p.m., including inside a private home.

Q: Can food trucks continue to operate after 10 p.m.?

A: Yes. Food trucks may offer takeout after 10 p.m., but they must ensure people don’t linger or gather at the site.

Q: Is exercising after 10 p.m. a violation of the curfew?

A: No. Individuals may exercise after 10 p.m.; however, note that most city and county parks have a closing time. Groups exercising outdoors after 10 p.m. would be in violation. The intent of the curfew is to limit the gathering of people.

Do restaurants need to clear their dining rooms of customers at 10 p.m.?

Enforcement officers will honor a grace period of 30 minutes after closing, but restaurants should take all reasonable steps to close their dining rooms by 10 p.m., such as stopping the seating of new customers before 10 p.m. Restaurants may continue to offer takeout after 10 p.m.

I’m going to a wedding this weekend. If it goes later than 10 p.m., can I be cited for a curfew violation?

If the wedding is being held at a private business, such as an event space, attending the event is not a violation of the curfew so long as the current occupancy restrictions are met. Those restrictions vary, depending on the business.