SAN ANTONIO – The latest prediction models show COVID-19 is near a peak in San Antonio, but it’s not entirely good news, according to Dr. Ruth Berggren, an infectious disease specialist at the UT Health San Antonio’s Long School of Medicine.
“Our Sg2 model is suggesting that we are just about at peak, but that we are going to stay at the peak,” Berggren said.
The bad news is the peak could stay at this level until the end of July to early August.
“Our hospitals are just about at their capacity and the model predicts that we’re gonna stay there for the next two, even three weeks. So, this means we cannot back off,” Berggren said.
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The orange line in the graph below represents the prediction. Berggren said the models take into account several things including, the population density of San Antonio, the dates restrictions were imposed and when restrictions were relaxed.
The good news is that the rate of hospitalizations doesn’t seem to be increasing at a rate of 10% a day like it was in the previous weeks, according to Berggren.
Berggren said that the models do include the possibility of more COVID-19 cases from the July 4 holiday but do not include hospitalizations. The reason is people don’t get sick enough to go to the hospital until about two weeks after contracting COVID-19, Berggen said.
“We still worry that anything that happened on July 4 wouldn’t be evident from the hospital perspective until about the 18th or beyond of July,” she said.
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Another concern is how will COVID-19 behave during the fall when children go back to school and the flu season begins.