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SAN ANTONIO — Bexar County recorded its second-lowest COVID-19 case total over the last six weeks and hospitalizations continue to fall as August brings a recovery period from July’s coronavirus wave.
With students heading back to school this week, however, it remains to be seen if those trends will continue.
Metro Health reported 482 new infections Tuesday, tugging the seven-day case average down to 823. August has averaged 781 daily cases thus far, down from the 961 daily infections reported in July.
Local COVID-19 hospitalizations, meanwhile, are down by 40% since the start of the month. On Tuesday there were 247 patients receiving treatment in local hospitals; of those, 41 are in intensive care and 12 are using ventilators.
Just under 12% of the region’s hospital beds were available to take a new patient, which is one of the reasons Metro Health’s coronavirus risk indicator remains at “high” but “steady” this week.
More than 617,000 COVID-19 infections have been reported in the San Antonio area since the start of the pandemic, while 5,351 Bexar County residents have lost their lives to virus complications.
The following numbers are provided by San Antonio Metro Health. A full breakdown can be found here.
The CDC states that “when a high percentage of the community is immune to a disease (through vaccination and/or prior illness),” that community will have reached herd immunity, “making the spread of this disease from person to person unlikely.”
The City of San Antonio breaks down the vaccination rates by zip code on Metro Health’s Vaccination Statistics page.
The total number of coronavirus cases in the state grew by 6,750 on Tuesday, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. That total includes 4,594 new confirmed cases and 2,156 new probable cases. More details can be found on this page.
Tuesday’s figures bring the total number of Texans diagnosed with COVID-19 to more than 7.61 million.
An additional 38 Texans have died from virus complications, the state reported Wednesday, raising the statewide death toll to 88,179.
The symptoms of coronavirus can be similar to the flu or a bad cold. Symptoms include fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, new loss of taste or smell sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, and diarrhea, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Most healthy people will have mild symptoms. A study of more than 72,000 patients by the Centers for Disease Control in China showed 80 percent of the cases there were mild.
But infections can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure, and even death, according to the World Health Organization. Older people with underlying health conditions are most at risk.
Experts determined there was consistent evidence these conditions increase a person’s risk, regardless of age:
City officials recommend getting a COVID-19 test if you experience fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, or diarrhea.
A self-screening tool is available to see if you need a test.
Here’s a Testing Sites Locator to help you find the testing location closest to you in San Antonio.
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