» Virus transmission in San Antonio stabilizing.
Coronavirus transmission in San Antonio finally began to stabilize Monday, but officials cautioned that it’s still too early to say whether the winter surge has peaked.
“Many of our indicators have either stabilized or improved for the first time in weeks,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said at the daily coronavirus briefing.
The positivity rate, which measures the proportion of people who test positive for the virus, dropped for the third straight week, to 15 percent. The case rate also decreased significantly in the past seven days, from 103.4 reported infections for every 100,000 residents, to 80.2.
The seven-day average for new cases stands at 1,722, down from more than 2,000 last week.
However, officials said hospitalizations and new cases remain high, indicating that the crisis is not yet over.
“We’re going to have to monitor the data over several weeks,” said Rita Espinoza, chief of epidemiology for the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District. “A lot of the indicators have gone down, but we still have a long way to go.”
Officials reported 2,082 new cases Monday, a total that included cases from Sunday due to reporting lags from laboratories. Since the start of the pandemic, at least 162,108 residents of Bexar County have been infected with the virus.
There were also 13 more resident deaths from COVID-19 in the past two weeks, pushing the official death toll to 1,980. The deaths include three people who died at home and three nursing home residents, two of whom died at facilities.
Coronavirus patients continue to strain the local health care system, accounting for more than 35 percent of all hospital patients. Hospitalizations from the pandemic have stopped their dramatic climb. For the past several days, they have hovered around 1,400 patients, after reaching a record high of 1,520 on Jan. 18.
On Monday, 1,402 COVID patients were receiving treatment across the city, an increase of 21 patients from the previous day. Of those hospitalized, 117 had been admitted in the past day, while 409 were critically ill and 263 were breathing with the support of a ventilator.
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff noted at the briefing that even after the summer surge reached its peak, it took several months for hospitalizations to return to manageable levels.
“It's still going to be a lot facing us over the next two or three weeks,” he said.
Wolff said the vaccine clinic being run by University Health at the Wonderland of the Americas Mall will return to prioritizing those at higher risk of COVID-19 complications because of age or underlying conditions, after inoculating workers from local school districts last week. The clinic will begin administering the second dose of vaccines to some residents starting next week, he added.
Nirenberg said he was encouraged by steps taken by the Biden administration to increase the supply of vaccine to the general public, adding that scheduling appointments further out would be easier once shipments became more predictable. have sought to keep the full nearly 2,400square-foot foundation of St. James Church intact, some of them have acknowledged that would pose challenges in the design of an entertainment plaza, and could affect the project's flood-control capacity.
Fly said it would be “disgraceful” to destroy or relocate the St. James site.
“If it's demolished, I feel like again it's just another insult to the efforts of those people to get that land,” he said. “If you're going to help encourage and build the self esteem of a community, you don't demolish it or pick it up and say, ‘Well, we're going to take it somewhere else.' I think it's a part of the fabric of the project.”
The six-segment Culture Park project, with its first northernmost stretch downtown dedicated in May 2018, is part of the federally authorized San Antonio Channel Improvement Project. The archaeological site is within a threeblock extension of the park, from Houston to Nueva Street, projected to cost at least $74.7 million, in an expensive but important segment in a historic area downtown that includes the Spanish Governor's Palace, once part of a 1722 presidio.
SARA has twice pushed back the targeted completion of the current segment, from March 2021 to spring of 2022. While work has been at a standstill around the AME church site, construction has continued elsewhere, including Houston Street, where replacement of a bridge over the creek has been under way.
Steve Tillotson, design principal with Muñoz & Co., the project's lead architect, told the Culture Park Subcommittee in December that the church footprint was swallowed up by the industrial complex after the 1870s and demolished after Houston Street was widened in the 1890s. The area was later used for parking for the Alameda, built in 1949.
But Tillotson said the St. James site sheds light on an underrepresented part of San Antonio history, about people who were “especially vulnerable and facing a tremendous challenge” while adjusting to life after emancipation.
“It was a very important institution to pull together the religious and political rights for newly freed slaves,” Tillotson said. “And to have this evidence there, and to have that presence that we can really celebrate along with all of the other cultures along the creek, I think is really important.”
Under Title 33, Section 408 of the U.S. Code, the corps may grant permission for an alteration that is not harmful to the public interest and does not impair the project's usefulness.
The corps seeks comments from the public, government agencies and others in accordance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act.
For those unable to attend the virtual meetings, recordings of the meetings will be posted on the San Pedro Creek Culture Park website, spcculturepark.com. SARA will mail printed materials to people who do not have access to a computer or the internet.
Printed materials also are available at SARA'S main office, 100 E. Guenther St., from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and may be requested by calling Nicole Marshall at 210-302-3252.
Public comments may be sent by to mail to: CESWF-PEE-C, ATTN: Ms. Leslie Crippen; P.O. Box 17300 Fort Worth, TX; 76102-0300. They also may be sent by email to Dllceswf-spcipcomments@usace.army.mil.