S.A. hospitals may have to ration care
Some1,700 or more COVID patients could flood area facilities this month
A day after San Antonio reported a record number of COVID-19 cases, the city again surpassed another troubling milestone: the number of hospital beds filled with COVID-19 patients.
Over the last day, 184 people with COVID-19 were admitted to San Antonio hospitals — the highest one-day total ever reported.
That tipped Wednesday’s hospitalizations to 1,341 patients, up from 1,318 Tuesday.
The previous peak was 1,267, set during the summer surge of the virus.
“Our ability to maintain capacity at hospitals is important to everyone,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. “If you’re in a car accident, if you’re pregnant, if you need surgery, if you need medical care that needs hospitalization, that is being affected by the stress on our hospitals.”
Health officials estimate that 1,700 or more COVID-19 patients could flood San Antonio hospitals this month. If the numbers grow so large that there aren’t enough hospital beds and staff to care for patients, medical providers will be forced to ration care — not only to patients with COVID-19 but anyone who needs medical care.
County Judge Nelson Wolff said that hospitals are currently preparing to convert typical hospital rooms into intensive care units if the need arises.
More than1in 3 patients in Bexar County hospitals have COVID-19. Of those, 383 required intensive care Wednesday, up from 369 the previous day. The number of patients on ventilators also jumped to 199, from 185 on Tuesday.
It could only be a matter of time before the number of patients severely ill with COVID-19 shatters the records set this summer, when 438 patients needed intensive care and 299 relied on ventilators to breathe.
In the beginning of the pandemic, ventilators were thought to be one of the best weapons against the virus.
But in the months since then, medical professionals have learned more effective ways to prevent patients from becoming severely ill with COVID-19.
One of those treatments is an antibody cocktail aimed at staving off the worst of the disease's effects. Wolff said health workers at the Freeman Coliseum have been administering those treatments at far higher rates than they were last year. About 60 people are receiving the antibody cocktails each day now, up from eight when the program first started, Wolff said.
“We're doing everything we can to keep people out of hospitals,” said Wolff.
But it's becoming harder and harder for residents to avoid the disease as it spreads across the city. Officials reported 2,097 cases Wednesday, bringing Bexar County's total since the start of the pandemic to 126,867.
“It's very dangerous out there with regard to the transmission of COVID-19,” Nirenberg said.
San Antonio has already begun to see the deadly consequences of surges in cases over the holidays.
Bexar County's death toll since the start of the pandemic now stands at 1,578 after officials reported four more deaths Wednesday.
The latest victims include a Hispanic man in his 60s; a Hispanic man in his 70s; a Black man in his 60s; and a white woman in her 80s. All of them died at area hospitals.