SAN ANTONIO – There’s been a 12.1% spike in hospitalizations across the country due to COVID-19 in the past week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The city’s COVID-19 surveillance dashboard, updated Wednesday, showed an increase of 916 cases this past week, bringing the total of reported cases over the past three years to over 700,000.
Dr. Fred Campbell, an associate professor and internal medicine specialist at UT Health San Antonio, said COVID-19 is here to stay, but there aren’t any new strains aside from lineages of the omicron variant.
“To my knowledge, there have not been any new strains since the ones we were reporting approximately a year ago and those have been sensitive to the vaccines and vaccine boosters that we’ve been giving patients in the community and around the country,” said Campbell.
Campbell said herd immunity had been established with previous vaccinations and boosters causing infections to drop, but at the moment, there are no known efforts to push new or additional boosters.
Although the COVID-19 virus has been observed to behave similarly to that of the flu, health experts anticipate an uptick in COVID-19 cases as well as the usual rise in influenza to occur in the fall and early winter.
“So, I have no doubt that the health department and local hospitals and health organizations are prepared to meet any uptick, up significant uptick in the virus this fall,” said Campbell.