Bexar hits grim high: 1,717 cases in one day
The San Antonio area hit a record Tuesday for the highest number of new coronavirus cases reported in a single day since the pandemic began, as city and county officials once again implored residents to avoid large gatherings over the Christmas weekend.
“Having a virtual Christmas is better than hoping for your loved one to recover from the ICU or worse, having to plan a funeral to ring in the new year,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said at the daily city-county coronavirus briefing.
Bexar County added 1,717 new COVID-19 cases as the post-Thanksgiving surge continues to batter the region, officials reported — climbing past the previous record of 1,688 on July 22, reached at the height of the summer surge.
There were 2,202 cases reported
July 19, but those included backlogged cases from weeks and months earlier.
Tuesday’s count is the highest single-day figure to date, Metro Health officials confirmed. The total is now 105,164.
The seven-day average of new cases rose slightly to 1,174 from 1,123 on Monday.
Eleven more people have died of the virus — the highest singleday of reported deaths since September. The local death toll from COVID-19 now stands at 1,471.
The number of coronavirus patients in San Antonio hospitals climbed to 912 Tuesday, up from 889 on Monday. Of those patients, 133 were newly admitted within the past 24 hours.
Those in need of critical medical attention also continued to rise. The number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care climbed to 292 from 286 the previous day.
The number of those hooked up to ventilators to help them breathe stood at 146, the same as Monday.
Of the deaths reported Tuesday, the youngest was an Anglo man in his 40s who died at home. An Asian American man in his 90s died at a retail store. The others all died in local hospitals.
They were two Hispanic men in their 90s; three more Hispanic men, one in his 50s, one in his 60s and another in his 70s; two Anglo men, both in their 70s; a Hispanic woman in her 60s; and a woman in her 70s whose ethnicity/race wasn’t listed.
The rising number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths pushed city and county officials to send an emergency alert to thousands of phones across the area, warning residents of the worsening nature of the pandemic.
So far, Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff aren’t planning on instituting a nightly curfew over the holiday weekend as they did during Thanksgiving.
Metro Health officials haven’t recommended taking that step, but it hasn’t been ruled out.
For now, local officials are sticking to telling residents to forego gatherings with people outside of their individual households this Christmas.
Already, they’ve turned their attention to New Year’s Eve, which Wolff warned could result in even more deaths and COVID-19 patients in hospital beds if people gather in large groups to drink and shoot off fireworks. Nirenberg agreed.
“No matter how you cut it, these are bad numbers and they should wake up everyone to the reality of COVID-19 in our community,” he said.
Hospitals already are under tremendous strain.
Of all patients in San Antonio hospitals Tuesday, 15.1 percent of them are sick with COVID-19, Nirenberg said. Just 10 percent of the county’s hospital beds are empty and available for new patients.
Hospitals are postponing sur
geries, and could require an influx of additional health care workers to help, Wolff said.
Emergency officials are bracing for the number of COVID-19 patients in local hospitals to grow in the coming week. A model used by Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council, which manages emergency services for Bexar and surrounding counties, recently projected a worst-case scenario of hospitalizations peaking at more
than 1,700 in January.
But officials said that doesn’t have to become reality if residents keep wearing masks, maintaining social distance from others and avoiding large gatherings.
“If everybody started wearing a mask and staying home when they were sick, we could … change that trajectory,” said Colleen Bridger, the city’s incident commander overseeing the COVID-19 response.