ST. LOUIS — The head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force said the St. Louis area is starting to see improvements in the weekly change of COVID-19 cases in the area, but said the area is still in a "danger zone" due to the number of cases in the community.
Dr. Alex Garza, Incident Commander of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force, said the percentage change of new cases has started to come down, but the number of cases in the community remains a concern.
This chart takes the rolling 14-day average on a given day and compares it to the rolling 14-day average from two weeks ago.
"Now, as you can see, that percentage is starting to come down, which is good," Dr. Garza said. "So the case counts are starting to come down. The rolling average percentage will start to come down. But we're still in that danger zone, and that's mostly because we still have a large number of cases circulating out in the community."
Dr. Garza said the reproduction number and positivity rate are both higher than the task force suggests.
Here are the task force numbers for Monday.
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) decreased – from 36 yesterday to 33 today. *
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) increased – from 41 yesterday to 42 today. *
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations increased - from 246 yesterday to 252 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations increased - from 242 yesterday to 290 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 163 yesterday to 179 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs remained the same at 72 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators decreased – from 34 yesterday to 30 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 20 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 3,982.
*Yesterday’s hospital admissions data was not complete, missing key data from one of the task force hospitals. This number has been corrected leading to the change in admissions data for Sunday, August 2. We apologize for any trouble this may cause.
You can watch the briefing on the task force's Facebook page or in the player below.
The update Monday comes as the state of Missouri reports more than 1,000 cases for the first time since Friday.
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services reported 1,047 new COVID-19 cases and two new deaths, bringing the totals in the state to 52,887 cases and 1,255 deaths.
The department reported 10,481 new polymerase chain reaction — or PCR — tests Thursday, bringing the total in the state to 712,948.
Although the department has reported fewer new cases over the last four days, the positivity rate has continued to increase. On Monday, the positivity rate increased from 7.38% to 7.42%.
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Statewide hospitalizations remained at 889 Monday.
The Missouri Hospital Association said it is still working to clarify some discrepancies with the United States Department of Health and Senior Services.
"Due to variation in the interpretation of the definition of suspected COVID-19 patients, there may be slight discrepancies in the reporting of this measure," a note in the Missouri DHSS dashboard said. "The Missouri Hospital Association (MHA) has sought clarification from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and are awaiting formally documented clarification, which will be shared with DHSS."
