SAN ANTONIO – A seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases will now be reported during the city and county’s daily briefing.
“We’re going to update that daily because we are at such high levels of infection and you’re seeing the case numbers daily jump so much up one day, down the next. And the reason for that is that the daily cases are not really a reflection of who’s getting sick in a 24-hour period,” Mayor Ron Nirenberg said.
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The seven-day average announced on Wednesday was 768 positive cases.
On Tuesday, city officials reported 1,546 new cases but they cautioned those cases could be a week old. On Wednesday, 946 new cases were reported.
Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff pointed to issues with private and national labs, which are creating a lag in results.
“And all of this data from an individual case standpoint is coming back at different times, different time intervals. And so that’s what’s causing the volatility,” Nirenberg said.
On Monday, Quest Diagnostics, a national lab that processes COVID-19 tests, announced on its website that demand “remains high as the virus has spread across the United States.” The demand is stressing their testing capacity which in turn is delaying test results, according to the company’s statement on its website.
Metro Health said people who get tested for the coronavirus at the city’s free testing sites are getting their results within two to three days.
There are a total of 50 testing locations across Bexar County. Each location has a contract with a specific lab to process the tests, which could be Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp or a private lab.