SAN ANTONIO – Correction: This story initially reported that Mayor Ron Nirenberg was scheduled to be a participant at the meeting. He was not.
City officials have canceled a community engagement meeting where they were supposed to discuss the response to the new coronavirus pandemic in District 2.
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The meeting with San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood and District 2 Councilwoman Jada Andrews-Sullivan was canceled due to pushback over it taking place at a fire station, according to city staff. It was supposed to take place at noon Wednesday.
An SAFD spokesman said the fire department believed it was just meant to be a meeting and was never informed it was meant to be open to the press.
The additional pushback follows scrutiny over the city’s plans to potentially house patients from nursing homes at River City Care Center, located at 921 Nolan St. in District 2.
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Plans also included housing patients at Westover Hills Rehabilitation and Healthcare, but due to harsh scrutiny, the facility backed out of the commitment.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said Tuesday that Westover pulled out of the plan because of the “intense scrutiny and frankly political backlash that had been occurring over there and in this process.”
“...we’ll see what happens with River City. That kind of scrutiny is also occurring over there,” he said Tuesday.
Westover Hills pulls out of plan to house COVID-19 patients
According to previous KSAT.com reports, neither the city nor the county selected Westover Hills and River City to house the patients. The facilities were chosen by management companies.
There are 815 positive cases of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in Bexar County. That’s an increase of 21 cases after Monday’s reported 772 cases. The total death toll remained steady at 33 in Bexar County.
COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new virus, stands for coronavirus disease 2019. The disease first appeared in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, but spread around the world in early 2020, causing the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic in March.
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