SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio Metropolitan Health District is reporting its highest single-day COVID-19 case count since the pandemic started with 7,704 new cases on Wednesday.
Wednesday’s COVID-19 Numbers
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Metro Health’s COVID-19 dashboard reported a 7-day moving average of 4,352 cases. There were three new deaths reported, according to the data. Thirteen new deaths have been reported over the past seven days.
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There are 958 COVID patients in local hospitals with 201 in ICU and 79 on ventilators. Metro Health’s dashboard shows there are 10% of staffed beds available and 67% of ventilators available.
On Tuesday, Metro Health’s dashboard reported a 31% positivity rate for this week, a 3.7% increase from the 27.3% reported last week.
See more of today’s COVID-19 statistics and city resources for the public here.
KSAT Q&A: Mayor Ron Nirenberg discusses omicron surge and its impact on city services
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg joined Wednesday’s Q&A on the 6 p.m. News to discuss the omicron surge and what impacts it has on city services, as well as vaccination talks to get more students innoculated.
When asked about the lower vaccination rate among children in our area, Nirenberg said he and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff met with district leaders to discuss better messaging for local families.
“The judge and I convened with the superintendents today to talk about that and the importance for us to get the message to families that are 5- to 11-year-old population, which was the last to become eligible with the vaccinations, still has a lot of room to improve, and we know those students are back in school,” Nirenberg said. “And so to protect them, we need to make sure that they’re getting vaccinated.”
Nirenberg encouraged parents to get vaccines for their children now that school is back underway, putting them at more risk for exposure.
“So if you are a parent of a child who’s between 5 and 11, you are eligible for the vaccine, and you should go get it to protect them in the school setting to make sure that, again, they’re not at further risk for severe infection,” he said.
The mayor said omicron COVID-19 cases have affected city staff members, but services have not been impacted so far.
“The omicron variant has also hit city staff and emergency personnel, and so we have seen staff ranks suffer, but it has not affected the delivery of city services. Thankfully, not yet,” Nirenberg said.
Nirenberg said employee COVID-19 cases are at the highest numbers seen since the pandemic began.
“We’ve seen a little bit of a drop in the number of positive cases this week compared to last, but we are very close to that. In fact, we are at the highest numbers we’ve seen in terms of infections among employees, and we’ve got to watch that very carefully to make sure that it doesn’t impact city services,” he said.
Watch the entire Q&A with Mayor Ron Nirenberg in the embedded video player above.
City health officials offer the following testing guidelines
- Consider using a self-test before joining indoor gatherings with others who are not in your household.
- A positive self-test result means that you have an infection and should avoid indoor gatherings to reduce the risk of spreading the disease to someone else.
- A negative self-test result means that you may not have an infection. Repeating the test with at least 24 hours between tests will increase the confidence that you are not infected.
- Ask your health care provider if you need help interpreting your test results.
Click here to access more information about other city no-cost testing sites.