With an upswing in local case counts, San Antonio officials are ramping up their coronavirus warnings and enforcement measures, including shutting down a strip club near northeast Loop 410.
The slope of the recent upswing in cases that began in October continues to rise, though not as quickly as in mid-July, when the number of COVID-19 patients reached 1,267 on July 13.
But in their daily coronavirus briefing Tuesday, Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said that rate will continue to increase into Thanksgiving and December holidays unless people wear masks and avoid gathering in confined indoor spaces.
“We are reaching a really dangerous point, and we haven’t even gotten to Thanksgiving yet,” Wolff said.
The case trends have San Antonio Code Enforcement officials stepping up their inspections of local businesses for compliance with state health codes. As of last week, San Antonio Metropolitan Health District inspectors were conducting 350 inspections per week, more than at any other point during the pandemic, Nirenberg said.
On Tuesday, the City revoked a certificate of occupancy for a northeast San Antonio adult business called XTC Cabaret. The website for the business at 2023 Stable Lane advertises “San Antonio’s best strip club,” a place “where fantasies come to life.”
A phone call to XTC Cabaret rang out at around 7 p.m. Tuesday and did not go to voicemail.
Nirenberg said the City revoked the club’s license “for continually and deliberately violating [health] orders and thereby putting people at risk,” with inspectors visiting 18 times and issuing six citations to XTC Cabaret since March. It’s the third time the City has revoked a business’s certificate of occupancy for coronavirus-related health violations since the pandemic began, Nirenberg said.
“As of today, we will not be issuing warnings,” Nirenberg said, giving notice that those who violate the orders would face citations. “So consider that. Most businesses are following the orders.”
Officials reported 1,127 new coronavirus cases Tuesday, with 513 patients in Bexar County hospitals. Of those, 173 are in intensive care, with 86 on ventilators. A man and a woman from Bexar County, each in their 70s, died of COVID-19, bringing the death toll to 1,337.
The increase in cases is the highest single-day tally since July and Bexar County’s eighth-highest of the pandemic. It brought the seven-day moving average up from 549 cases on Monday to 669 on Tuesday.
One troubling sign of the virus’s spread is the rate of people who test positive compared to the number tested. That rate now stands at 10 percent, which Metro Health officials consider a “severe” risk.
That’s even as the total number of tests conducted continues to rise. On Monday, public and private health care workers tested 5,550 people in San Antonio, Wolff said Tuesday. Last week, a record-setting 42,000 people were tested in Bexar County, Nirenberg said.
Transmission among schoolchildren also remains a significant concern. During Tuesday’s briefing, Metro Health’s medical director, Dr. Junda Woo, said that “most” schools in the community are at around 50 to 60 percent occupancy, even though health officials are currently recommending only 25 percent.
“The good part is that the number of outbreaks is less than we would have expected,” Woo said. The health department defines a school “outbreak” as one or more instances of in-school transmission. Bexar County has had 712 coronavirus cases in schools, though only seven outbreaks, Woo said.
Woo compared the pandemic’s current trajectory to a speeding train that takes time to slow down.
“If we all start pulling the brakes now, hopefully it will be a lower curve and not as long,” Woo said.
