Read more stories wrapping 2021 here.
The year is ending as it began — with a spike in COVID-19 cases.
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That’s not to say that there wasn’t progress made against the coronavirus in 2021, because there was. And so far, the end-of-December spike shows hundreds of new cases a day, not thousands like last January.
The start of 2021 focused on getting vaccines to healthcare workers, those 65 years and older and people with qualifying health conditions as COVID-19 hospitalizations reached an all-time high in Bexar County.
By the end of March, cases were down drastically and the vaccine was available to all adults in Texas. But, just as we got our hopes up for a “normal” summer, the delta variant hit. That caused cases to climb again, peaking in mid-August just as kids headed back to school.
This month, it’s the omicron variant that’s causing cases to rise.
There’s hope though, as the year comes to a close, with vaccines for children, boosters and newly approved treatments — all things that were unavailable a year ago.
Last January, only a few thousand people had received a single vaccine in Bexar County, Now, more than 1.3 million are fully vaccinated here, city data shows.
Here’s a look back at the top COVID-19 headlines in 2021 to see how far we’ve come in the fight against COVID-19: