SAN ANTONIO — The start of the school year yielded new concerns about coronavirus spread as numbers started to rise both locally and across the country, exacerbated by last-minute family vacations and millions of kids returning to classrooms.
San Antonio also saw a late-summer surge in cases, with reports from local health officials showing that COVID case totals were rising by a few hundred each week starting the week of July 18. If the latest Metro Health figures issued Tuesday are any indication, that rise might have plateaued and is starting to become a wave.
Health officials on Tuesday reported 2,045 new COVID-19 diagnoses in the San Antonio area from Sept. 5 through Monday, down from 2,656 and 2,682 in each of the previous two weeks. This week's drop marks the first significant fall in coronavirus cases since the weekslong surge began, and also comes as an advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approves new booster shots for all Americans 6 months of age and older.
Those shots could be widely available by the end of the week.
Two more San Antonio-area residents died from COVID-related complications last week, bringing the area's death toll to 6,256 since the start of the pandemic. At least 722,226 cases have been reported in the timeframe for the San Antonio region, though that number likely doesn't include tens of thousands of at-home tests that went unreported.
Various COVID-19 variants have played a role in the recent rise in cases, though hospitalizations have risen to nearly the same degree as case counts. Part of the reason for that is a general populace that's built up immunity to severe COVID-19 symptoms.
Metro Health reports new weekly data every Tuesday around 4:30 p.m. The county also continues to hold no-cost, pop-up vaccine clinics for those who need a shot; see a full list here.
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