For five weeks, COVID-19 cases in San Antonio have shown a “slow and steady uptick,” mirroring trends of a typical annual summer surge in coronavirus cases.
According to the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District weekly surveillance data, local cases went up by 727 the week of July 19. The following week, 916 new cases were reported. As of Tuesday, there had been 1,227 new cases in the past seven days.
The summer surge isn’t a surprise. It’s usual to see a summer surge, but case numbers aren’t as high as previous summers, including in 2022, said Anita Kurian, deputy health director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District in its Communicable Disease Division.
This summer’s uptick is not indicative of a fast, uncontrollable spread, and immunity has kept many from severe hospitalization and death, compared with previous summer surges, Kurian said.
“I’m not saying [the summer surge is] not happening here,” Kurian said. “We are seeing an increase for the past five weeks, but what I’m saying is it’s not as high an increase as we had documented a year ago, or maybe the year before the last.”
San Antonio’s data follows national COVID-19 data, which shows weekly positivity rates are up 8.9%, while hospital admissions are up 12.5%. Locally, data shows positivity rates, cases and hospitalizations are up.
University Health data shows a “steady increase” in COVID-19 positivity rates since July. Positivity rates for patients who have been tested are above 20%, said University Health spokeswoman Elizabeth Allen.
On Monday, the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an advisory that “COVID-19 indicators, including hospital admissions, emergency department visits, test positivity, and wastewater levels, are increasing nationally.”
Hospital admission levels across the country are still low for more than 99% of the country, but trends show hospitalizations are up 12.5% nationwide.
In San Antonio, Kurian said hospital admissions have continued to stay low and are currently at less than 10 per 100,000 population.
Unlike previous summer surges that brought the Omicron and Delta variants, Kurian said no single variant has dominated infections nationwide this summer enough to cause a rise in cases or death.
According to CDC, the EG.5, known as the Eris Omicron variant, makes up the largest proportion of new COVID-19 infections nationwide. The next most common variants after EG.5 are XBB.1.16 at 15.6%, XBB.2.23 at 11.2% and XBB.1.5 at 10.3%.
Symptoms across variants are usually the same — coughing, sneezing, sore throat, shortness of breath, runny nose, headache and fatigue.
“Our trends are exactly the same as the national trends. We are no different from any other place in the nation. It’s the EG.5, which is slightly ahead of the chart,” Kurian said of local data.
Updated vaccines that protect against the new variants are set to roll out in the fall, when there’s usually an increase in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) hospitalizations.
Metro Health hasn’t received communication yet on when those vaccines are coming, Kurian said, but they should be available locally at some point in late September.
COVID-19 vaccines are also moving onto the commercial market in fall 2023, when the U.S. government’s COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Program ends. COVID-19 vaccines will still be free for most insured people, Kurian said, and uninsured families will have access to free vaccines through the CDC’s Bridge Access Program.
Due to the end of the public health emergency on May 11, people with health insurance no longer have access to free COVID-19 tests, and may also have new co-pays for PCR tests.
COVID-19 tests and treatments are covered for uninsured people by temporary Medicaid coverage. But free vaccines through the temporary CDC program will not be available after December 2024. People on Medicare must pay for at-home tests, and they will have access to COVID-19 tests, treatments and vaccines at no cost until 2024.
Kurian said the summer uptick should remind San Antonians that they still need to take pandemic precautions like getting their vaccine boosters.
“These increases are good reminders that COVID-19 is still prevalent in our community, albeit it is at low levels,” she said. “We all need to make sure we are up to date with our COVID-19 vaccines to keep it that way.”
Metro Health in May removed some COVID-19 tracking data from its website. The health department no longer updates the dashboard with community risk levels, vaccination and positivity rates, hospital trends, and lab COVID-19 testing data — it only reports COVID-19 cases and related deaths on Tuesdays.
“We see slight upticks during summer, slight upticks during winter. Any opportunity that there is for people to congregate at any big events happening, we see an uptick, and that is to be expected,” Kurian said. “We see that with flu. We see that with other infectious conditions, too. It’s hard to say when will it go back.”
