Mayor Nirenberg,

Thank you for your time to discuss some ideas/recommendations coming from physician members of Bexar County Medical Society (BCMS) yesterday.  We appreciate your leadership and everything our City and County are doing to address this crisis.  A group of physicians, including the leadership of BCMS and led by John Nava, MD, chair of the BCMS Public Health Committee, has been meeting weekly to discuss ways to contribute to and assist our City and County leaders to help mitigate the Coronavirus pandemic.

First and foremost, our physician members agree and stress that the importance of proper hand-washing and maintaining social distance cannot get enough publicity.  This should be top of mind awareness for everyone at all times.  BCMS physicians agree and support what we are calling “Masks for All” – that everyone wear a mask at anytime they must be out in public, while continuing to maintain social distance.  Another recommendation that surfaced is that perhaps our City and County leaders should consider encouraging essential businesses to help reinforce this effort by making sure their patrons are also wearing masks when they are in their place of business.  Further educating our community about why this is important, in terms of the concerns associated with asymptomatic individuals is crucial.

Also the city and county have strong communication sections so they can also help get the message out.  Those sections can also help us reach out to the mass media ( radio and TV and maybe even getting the billboard industry to donate a few billboards in strategic locations. Rolling signs on road where it says don’t drink and drive can also have public health message of social distancing, handwashing and masks for all. Finally let us not forget that the messaging needs to go out in both English and Spanish.

BCMS stands ready to assist you in any capacity we can.  We have physician spokespersons on stand-by to participate in press conferences, town hall discussions and other presentations.  Let us know how we can help.  As we also discussed, our point of contact at BCMS is Mary Nava, chief government affairs officer.  Ms. Nava can be reached at (210) 382-6137 (cell) or by email at mary.nava@bcms.org.

Thank you!