With COVID-19 hospital admissions climbing at a “critical rate,” is it safe for children to go back to school? That’s a question Dr. Alex Garza, incident commander of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force, has received at every briefing lately.
“I’m not sure where we are going to be with this pandemic in the next three weeks,” said Garza, during his Wednesday, July 22 briefing. “If we continue on this trajectory, I can tell you we’ll be in worse shape. So then that has to figure into your calculus on whether to reopen schools or not, whether to delay reopening or take other steps.”
The schools systems, health care officials and public health officials have been working hard to create safe environments for kids to go to school, Garza said.
“The key to that is to have multiple different plans and to assess risk,” Garza said. “Every person’s risk is a little bit different. Children generally do okay with the virus, but that doesn’t mean everyone does okay who works at a school.”
The virus could poorly impact teachers, support staff and families, he said. Some school districts are choosing all virtual, and some are choosing schedules that alternate days that students attend.
“I don’t believe there is one plan that is the best,” Garza said, “but we have to see where we will be in another three weeks and a month.”
He told the American in an interview that it took from March 23 to May 15 to “turn the battleship” around, in terms of transmission and hospitalizations. While he has hope that areas with mask mandates can make a dramatic shift in the next few weeks, Garza said, “I tell my kids that this is pretty much going to be a lost year, from a lot of things, not just school. It’s the lost year. It just is. As much as I don’t want to accept it, I kind of have to.”
Garza holds briefings three days a week to share the hospital data for the task force, which makes up the region’s four largest healthcare systems: SSM Health, BJC HealthCare, Mercy and St. Luke’s Hospital. These systems represent 2.8 million people for an area that includes surrounding counties in Missouri and Illinois.
“Unfortunately, this week our region has reached a very sobering milestone in our reporting data,” Garza said at the beginning of his briefing. “Our admissions now climb to over 40 for the past two out of three days. We haven’t seen those admissions for nearly three months.”
However, he said he is more worried about where the numbers will be at the beginning of the school year. Wearing a mask — whether it’s mandatory or not — will prevent dramatic actions like shelter-in-place in the future.
New COVID-19 hospital admissions are climbing at a “critical rate,” he said. Yesterday, that number was 35 and today it is 44.
The task force uses a “seven-day moving average” to look at new hospital admissions because it shows the overall trend. On July 22, Garza said the average is 37, which is the highest that it’s been since the beginning of May. On July 8, it was 21.
“This growth rate is not sustainable,” he said. “This will result in health care slowing down in services that we offer. This curve will be impossible to bend backwards without some decisive action from the community, or less palatable by our elected officials.”
The seven-day average for people currently hospitalized who have tested positive for COVID-19 has also increased to 239. That number was 145 on July 3.
However this doesn’t include the number of inpatients who are waiting for test results. Inpatients who have tested positive increased — from 250 yesterday to 252 today. Inpatient awaiting test results increased — from 152 yesterday to 175 today. (Garza noted that this number includes people who didn’t come in for COVID-19 specifically, but were tested as a precaution.) Combined that’s 427 people in the hospitals who have either tested positive or are awaiting test results.
The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs increased — from 55 yesterday to 56 today. The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators increased — from 29 yesterday to 30 today.
Across the system hospitals, 41 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 3,511.
“We don’t want to get back to where we were in April when we were concerned about the availability of hospital beds and ventilators,” said Garza. “And the only way to keep transmission low is for everyone in the community to do their part.”
