The initial “worst-case scenario” for St. Louis region’s COVID-19 outbreak projected that between 1,600 and 3,000 people would be hospitalized at the peak of the initial wave.
However, Dr. Alex Garza, the incident commander for the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force, showed a graph during his Thursday, April 30 briefing that was a much more promising curve.
“What I want people to take away from this is: if you compare the blue and the orange lines, we were on track for that worst-case scenario,” Garza said, pointing to the graph. “Something happened, and it was right around April 5, and that’s when we took that right-hand turn and started to flatten out the curve.”
The graph Garza showed represents the number of people who tested positive for COVID-19 and were hospitalized in the task force’s statistical area. The task force includes four major health care systems: BJC HealthCare, Mercy, SSM Health and St Luke’s Hospital. These systems represent 2.8 million people for an area that includes surrounding counties in Missouri and Illinois.
It takes anywhere from seven to 14 days after people have contracted the virus to become so sick they need hospitalization, he said. If we march the dates back, the point where our numbers started to decrease aligned with when St. Louis County and the City of St. Louis enacted stay-at-home orders on March 23, he said.
Garza showed a new line on the graph that is the “reasonable best guess” for what our hospitalizations will look like moving forward — assuming that the stay-at-home orders and social distancing practices are still enforced. It showed that in the beginning of May, we will see a downward trend in hospitalizations. Garza has repeatedly said that hospitalization data is the best “barometer” for community spread and transmission of the virus, given the lack of testing capacity both locally and nationwide.
We are not heading down yet, he said, “but we are cautiously optimistic that we will continue down this curve.”
On Thursday, April 30, Garza reported that inpatient hospitalizations are slightly down from Wednesday — from 702 on Wednesday to 685 on Thursday. The number of patients in the intensive care units and number of patients on ventilators were about the same — 164 and 117, respectively. Across the system hospitals, 50 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of patients discharged to 1,260.
During the 1918 influenza pandemic, the St. Louis region was one of the first areas in the country to adopt social distancing restrictions. Unfortunately, officials lifted these restrictions too soon and there was a second wave of infections that was more devastating than the first, he said. We have a chance to learn from that mistake with the COVID-19 pandemic, Garza said.
“You have shown the country once again that St. Louis can lead the way in dealing with a pandemic,” he said, “and coming together as a community to fight this virus.”
Dr. Garza gives daily briefings on the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force Facebook page at 3:30 p.m.
