COVID prompts camping ban
Easter tradition to be prohibited at city parks even as virus transmission continues to wane
Even as transmission of the coronavirus in San Antonio continued to wane Monday and all Texas adults became eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the city will ban camping at public parks over Easter weekend.
Overnight camping at city parks is a prized Easter tradition that also was canceled last year because of the pandemic. But parks will still be open to the public during the day, Mayor Ron
Nirenberg said at the daily citycounty coronavirus briefing.
“I know that this has been a disappointing and difficult year for everyone,” Nirenberg said. “We’re asking for your patience as we try to put this pandemic behind us.”
The positivity rate, or the percentage of people tested for the virus who turn out to be infected, dropped to 2.1 percent Monday, officials said. A week ago, that figure — a measure of how widespread the virus is — sat at 2.3 percent.
Transmission of the virus is significantly down from when the winter surge of COVID-19 pushed local hospitals to the brink. At that time, the positivity rate hit 23.2 percent. Health officials consider any rate below 5 percent a sign that virus transmission is at a manageable level.
Still, officials warned residents not to let their guard down as cases rise across the country and more contagious variants spread — even as local numbers trend downward.
“We don’t want to take a chance of another outbreak,” Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said.
More than 467,000 people in
Bexar County have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Texas Department of State Health Services. That’s a little more than 30 percent of the adult population — about 1.6 million. Nearly 268,000 have been fully vaccinated.
Of Bexar County residents age 65 and older, almost 60 percent have received at least one vaccine, officials reported Monday. Thirty percent of residents age 16 and up have gotten at least one shot, they said.
Some of the 30,000 appointments made available at the city’s mass vaccination site at the
Alamodome last week were still available Monday by calling 311, said Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger, the city’s coronavirus czar.
University Health System, the county’s hospital system, will soon make appointments available to all residents regardless of their age, Wolff said.
“We’re really trying hard to make sure that we have multiple systems in place so that people who don’t have access to the internet still have access to get appointments,” Bridger said.
Officials reported 159 new cases of COVID-19 Monday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in Bexar County since the pandemic began last March to 205,258.
The seven-day moving average of new cases stood at 183 Monday — up seven from a week ago but down from 376 at the beginning of the month. At the height of the pandemic in January, the seven-day average of exceeded 2,000.
Officials reported no new deaths Monday. The total confirmed death toll since last March stands at 3,144.
Bexar County hospitals reported 192 COVID-19 patients — up slightly from 188 this time last week but less than half of the 464 patients hospitalized with coronavirus March 1.
Twenty more patients were admitted to local hospitals within the past 24 hours, officials said.
Seventy-eight patients are in intensive care for severe cases of the virus while 38 are hooked up to ventilators to help them breathe.