Virus positivity rate up, but other metrics better
The positivity rate for coronavirus infections increased by 3 percentage points Monday, returning to 5.6 percent where it was at the beginning of the month.
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said the increase could be the result of less testing for the virus last week during spring break. He said 20,047 people were tested, a 38,760 decrease from the previous week.
“I think it distorts that number,” he said.
San Antonio Metropolitan Health District officials say a rate of below 5 percent means that the virus is still circulating but at a more manageable level of transmission. The positivity rate is one benchmark of the virus' spread within the community.
The rate last week stood at 2.6 percent, the lowest it had been since October, which fell between the summer and winter surges of the virus.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said that despite the increase Monday, the risk of the coronavirus remains low.
“We're going to watch that as we get into new indicators next week,” Nirenberg said during the daily city-county coronavirus briefing.
Other indicators continue to show improving trends for coronavirus infections. Officials reported 154 new cases. The rolling seven-day average of new cases continued to fall to 171 per day, down from an average of 198 last Monday.
A total 215 patients are hospitalized with COVID-19, with 22 admitted in the past day. That compares with 464 at the beginning of March.
As of Monday, 90 people were in intensive care units and 53 people are on ventilators to help them
breathe.
San Antonio has seen 200,818 cases of the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic about year ago.
No new deaths were reported Monday. Bexar County’s death toll stands at 2,990 since the pandemic began.
Nirenberg and Wolff briefly addressed the vandalism that was discovered Sunday at Noodle Tree, a Northwest Side restaurant owned by Mike Nguyen. Nguyen, who is Vietnamese and French, found his restaurant spray-painted with hate speech a few days after he spoke out on CNN against Gov. Greg Abbott’s lifting of the mask mandate on Wednesday.
“There’s some sick people in our community, although it’s not many of them but they are around,” Wolff said.
Last year, the San Antonio City Council passed a resolution denouncing discrimination and aggression against the Asian community.
Nirenberg said the rise of anti-asian actions and comments as a result of the pandemic must be called out so that it can be eradicated.
“The quick response from neighbors that came out, customers to help clean up the Noodle Tree restaurant and to help chef Mike and his team was a great display of the kind of compassionate action to stamp out hate when it rears its head in our community,” he said.
Nirenberg asked anyone with information regarding the perpetrator to call San Antonio police.