SAN ANTONIO — If there's one thing this virus has taught us, it's that time is precious.
For some, it's running out.
"Health workers and health systems are being pushed to the breaking point," the World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, said earlier this week.
In Switzerland, a country not necessarily known to battle, they're facing a war this world knows all too well.
"The ICU capacity is now at its limit," Professor Thierry Fumeaux, the former Swiss Society Society for Intensive Care Medicine President, told EuroNews this week.
The New York Times reports officials are asking Swiss residents to get their affairs in order.
"We're very very concerned," Cherise Rohr Allegrini said. The San Antonio epidemiologist has several members living in Switzerland, including her father-in-law.
"It's also a little bit scary because he's already in ill health so COVID could be the end," she said.
Like many European countries, Switzerland saw a surge early on in the pandemic.
"But they intervened pretty quickly they shut things down fairly quickly," Rohr Allegrini said. "They managed to get through the worst of it and were fine and unfortunately, it hit really hard again."
It's a hit Rohr Allegrini fears San Antonio could potentially see. As we near the holidays, she sees an all too familiar pattern.
"Over the past four weeks or so I saw an increase that's very similar to what we saw in June before we saw the spike," she said. "I think we're certainly at risk of seeing a major surge. So much is going to depend on how we really intervene to prevent new infections."
Prevention - a word tied to so many actions we can take. And actions could make time tick a little longer.