A woman swabs her nose at a COVID-19 testing site in San Antonio. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Community Labs

COVID-19 cases are rising in Bexar County amid claims by conspiracy theorists that another lockdown isn’t far off. However, a top infectious disease doctor said fears over the latest variant are largely overblown.

“People like bold predictions because it gets attention,” University Health infectious disease expert Dr. Jason Bowling told the Current. “But I think we’ve also seen that most people who make bold predictions are just as often wrong as they are correct.”

Despite the rising number of cases and the appearance of the highly mutated BA.2.86 variant, Bowling said cases and hospitalizations at University Health and in Bexar County are nowhere near the numbers recorded this past winter or last summer.

Metro Health recorded 1,965 new cases of COVID-19 for the week ended Monday, Aug. 21. That’s 353 more cases than the week prior and a 142% increase since cases first started rising again in Bexar County on June 27.

“The majority of the people around the world have some baseline immunity, so we’re in a better place than when it first emerged at the beginning of the pandemic,” Bowling said.

COVID is back in the news due to the discovery of the new BA.2.86 variant, which Bowling said is unique because it’s highly mutated, having about 36 variations in the spike protein. That could render current vaccines and boosters less effective.

Even so, only a few cases of the new variant have been reported globally, including one lone case in Michigan. And despite its mutation, Bowling said BA.2.86 doesn’t appear to cause more severe illness than the Omicron variants, which currently dominate the U.S. case count.

“There’s no sign in the few cases so far that there’s been any change in the clinical severity of the illness,” he added. “The big question with it really is whether or not it’s going to be able to transmit enough to compete with the other circulating strains, which are in circulation at much higher numbers.”

New single-dose COVID-19 boosters from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax should receive FDA approval by late September, according to Bowling. The new shots are expected to be widely available by early October.

While Bowling said the idea of the current case increase driving new lockdowns is far fetched, he added that those who are immunocompromised or are over 65  should evaluate whether it’s in their best interests to wear masks in public places.

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This article appears in Aug 23 – Sep 5, 2023.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...