Metro Health Director: ‘We have flattened the curve’ as coronavirus cases reach 1,652

SAN ANTONIO (KTSA News) – As the coronavirus count climbed to 1,652 in San Antonio and Bexar County, Metro Health Director Dawn Emerick declared,”We have flattened the curve.”

She cited several factors to back up her statement that “We have flattened the curve and we are on the other side of the curve.”  One of  those elements is the epidemic curve or  ‘epi curve,’ which measures the onset of illness in our community.

“That has gone up and it is now coming down , which is a classic sign of good news,” said Emerick.

She noted that the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths also are on the decline, and the doubling of case rates also has slowed down. Emerick says when Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff  issued the first Stay Home, Work Safe orders, the number of coronavirus cases was doubling every three days.

“Every three days, that number was doubling.  That’s just how frequent or the prevalence of COVID was in our community,” Emerick stated at the briefing Monday evening.

She says that ‘doubling number’ is now longer than 2 1/2 weeks.

Emerick said the Stay Home, Work Safe orders have helped flatten the curve, but she cautioned that “we’re not done with COVID-19.”

Nirenberg says in a short period of time we were able to slow the spread of the virus and not overrun hospitals and overload health care workers with COVID-19 patients. He’s urging people to continue wearing masks when social distancing is difficult or not possible.

“We don’t want to go through that pain that we saw in one month,” he said. ” We’re almost there and the more time we can show that we’re slowing the spread and limiting people getting sick, the more time the doctors and the researchers have to develop therapeutics and potentially, a vaccine that gets us completely out of the woods.”

The mayor reports 39 new cases of coronavirus, but 34 were from the Bexar County Jail, which means there were only 5 additional  COVID-19 cases in the community.

Fifty-seven patients are hospitalized and 18 are on ventilators. 756 have fully recovered.