The coronavirus positivity rate on Monday dipped below 6 percent for the first time since the first week of June, and Bexar County appears to have averted a surge in infections following Labor Day weekend.
Rising from 6 percent to 6.4 percent last week, the infection rate has now dipped to 5.9 percent as the all-important 5 percent threshold nears. A positivity rate of 5 percent or less would give local schools the all-clear to resume in-person schooling for most students.
After surges in coronavirus following the Memorial Day and Fourth of July weekends, Bexar County appears to have largely avoided another spike in the wake of Labor Day weekend.
“Three weeks [after Labor Day] is a pretty darn good indication we’re doing really good,” County Judge Nelson Wolff said Monday at a press briefing.
Though the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District added thousands of positives to the caseload over the weekend, those were from weeks prior to the Labor Day holiday in July.
Mayor Ron Nirenberg said that with more activity, transmission is and will be higher than in the early days of the pandemic, when lockdowns were observed throughout the area.
“We’d love to be all the way back down [to pre-June infection levels], but because of that transmission that’s occurring we’re staying relatively flat,” Nirenberg said. “Let’s just hope we don’t go in the wrong direction.”
Sixty-three cases were added to the county’s caseload on Monday, bringing the tally to 57,208, and the seven-day moving average to 139.
Twenty-two more residents were admitted to area hospitals with COVID-19 infections, as the COVID-19 patient count dropped by one to 220. There are 86 patients in intensive care and 34 on ventilators.
No deaths were reported on Monday, with the toll remaining at 1,130.
