No one has been working harder than our doctors, nurses, emergency responders, and other hospital and healthcare personnel. And once again, hospitals are bursting at the seams, with many local families seeing that first-hand this week, facing extra difficult circumstances for no other reason than the pure number of people who are sick, despite this latest variant being less severe. Cases of Covid in our local community have skyrocketed faster than we’ve ever seen, going from 98 to 411 in just one week’s time.
Of course as the health unit director, Patricia Mechler, points out, that’s only part of the big picture, since at-home tests are not reported in this count.
The City of San Antonio region’s Metro Health is classifying the stress of Covid as “Severe” as of this Monday, while the STRAC score is on the high side of Moderate, and hopefully will not rise into the severe category if hospitalizations start trending downward instead of up.
Some school districts, such as Carrizo Springs, have voluntarily closed down for a few days to help combat the surge.
Currently, during the already-busy cold and flu season, there are 679 Covid patients hospitalized and 150 in ICU in the SA area, leaving open staffed-bed capacity at 10%, though the city had to request many healthcare personnel to help fill the need as the January surge began and many of them fell ill too.
Texas Public Radio reported that “Texas’ official coronavirus death toll surpassed 75,000 on Thursday. That number includes 4,991 deaths reported in Bexar County since March 2020. The cumulative number of COVID-19 cases confirmed in Texas hit 4 million this week, and Texas hospitals are now treating more than 8,700 coronavirus patients.”
