The question everyone wants to know is: when can we go back to work and reopen parts of the community that have closed, said Dr. Alex Garza, chief medical officer for SSM Health, on Tuesday, April 21.
“As a clinician and a father and someone who cares about this community quite a bit, I understand the importance of having people get back to work and to school and to church,” Garza said. “What we are doing now is really hard. As healthcare professionals, we take it very seriously the profound psychological and economic impacts of this virus. It is not lost on us at all.”
Garza is the incident commander for the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force. The task force includes four major health care systems: BJC HealthCare, Mercy, SSM Health and St Luke’s Hospital.
Every day, Garza gives a briefing on the task force’s COVID-19 statistics that represent 2.8 million people for an area that encompasses surrounding counties in Missouri and Illinois in the larger St. Louis region.
On Monday, the task force reported a significant jump in hospitalizations, of nearly 100 people from Sunday, April 19 to Monday, April 20.
“That was in one day alone,” Garza said, “so that convinced me, and I hope it convinced you, that we are still on the rising side of the curve.”
The task force is planning for the gradual opening of more businesses and public spaces, he said, but the region cannot relax social distancing policies too quickly or there will be devastating consequences.
“We would have to do this all over again,” Garza said. “And, the pain of the last several weeks will be lost if we move too quickly and too soon. Instead, these steps are working.”
Garza said the stay-at-home orders should remain in place until we are beyond the peak of hospitalizations and have robust testing and tracing capabilities in place.
Garza reported on April 21 that there were 750 people currently hospitalized within the four medical systems. Of those, 187 were in the intensive care unit (ICU) and 130 people were on ventilators.
The St. Louis region is still on the trajectory to reach its peak in the COVID-19 pandemic around Saturday, April 25 — where anywhere from 600 to 1,500 people could be hospitalized at any one time.
“It’s going to take time,” Garza said. “We don’t get a second chance at doing it right.”
