The results of the City of San Antonio’s door-to-door study that tested 502 people who presented no symptoms of the coronavirus are in. None of them tested positive, Assistant City Manager Colleen Bridger told City Council on Tuesday.
The point of the study was to try to determine how many people have the virus but don’t show symptoms, Bridger said. “The good news is we found none. … The bad news is that does not help us determine what the prevalence of asymptomatic individuals is – other than to say it might be lower than we first thought.”
The City tested people from about 50 random households in each Council district in June. It’s unclear what the study would have revealed in July as cases in Bexar County surged, Bridger said.
It does not mean asymptomatic spread doesn’t occur, but the sample size may have been too small, Bridger said. “Regardless of that research result, we still know – there are still plenty of research studies that show – that asymptomatic transmission is possible with COVID.”
In May, officials said that around 75 percent of Bexar County jail inmates who tested positive for the virus were asymptomatic.
Bexar County saw 205 new cases reported on Tuesday, bringing the case count to 43,164. This continues the general trend downward in terms of cases and positivity rate, Bridger said.
“We don’t want people to think we’re out of the woods yet, but we’re definitely trending in the right direction,” she said, reminding people to wear a mask, practice social distancing, and wash their hands.
