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Social distancing is saving lives in San Antonio, city leaders say

"Our early indications are what we are doing of social distancing requirements is working," Mayor Nirenberg said Monday.

San Antonio and Bexar County leaders say we're still on the front end of the coronavirus curve. So when will we reach the peak of this outbreak? Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said it hard to pinpoint.

"Some say next week is going to be the hardest week," he said. "Then we may slide down. Then you will here one of the other experts say it is not going to happen until May 1. We really don't know."

While it may be unknown when we could see a peak of cases, in our area, these next few weeks are critical. However, Mayor Ron Nirenberg said what is clear is staying home is saving lives in our community.

"Our early indications are what we are doing of social distancing requirements is working," he said.

According to a model used by Community Information Now, in just seven days staying home has saved 1,271 lives. Laura McKieran is the group's executive director. She is also an Associate Professor of Management, Policy, and Community Health at the UTHealth School of Public Health in San Antonio.

"Our hope is to put some numbers to that understanding they aren't going to be exact," she said. "Nobody can model this thing exactly. But, to try and get some sense of a scale of the good we can do by doing nothing. I don't think humans are wired to feel good about doing nothing."

Their latest project looked at different variables and used a model by epidemiologists. While the data changes daily, the goal is to show how many lives are actually being saved if we do our part.

"Our hope is that it can give us a light at the end of the tunnel that this truly is doing some good," she said. "Even though, we can't see it."

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