St. Louis County reported 218 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday, July 8, the largest single one-day upsurge in case count since the onset of the pandemic. This is coming off of a holiday weekend, and the City of St. Louis has been reporting irregularities in how the State of Missouri is reporting lab results. Still, it’s a startling number.
Dr. Alex Garza, incident commander for the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force, is worried.
“The data is quite worrisome,” Garza said during his July 8 press briefing. “We have some accelerated transmission of the virus in the community. We have to do everything now to slow that down.”
Garza was speaking of hospital data rather than lab results. The task force reported 30 new hospital admissions on Wednesday, July 8 (lagged two days) — the highest the task force has seen since May 19.
Garza expected to see the rise in new COVID-19 hospital patients following the increase in reported cases. He believes the mask requirement for St. Louis city and county, ordered on July 3, will help slow down the increase, but it will take about 14 days to see solid results from the policy.
The task force uses a “seven-day moving average” to look at new hospital admissions because it shows the overall trend. On July 8, Garza said the average is 21, which is the highest that it’s been in a month.
The seven-day average for people currently hospitalized for COVID-19 has also increased to 164. That number was 145 on July 3, and 139 on July 1.
Garza shared the data as part of his regular press briefings 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.
Garza noted that national testing labs are seeing a surge throughout the country, which is creating a delay in test results. St. Louis also competes globally for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and the surge in cases nationally could put a strain on the region’s supplies. However, he said hospitals are adequately supplied now.
Garza also said that inpatients who have been confirmed COVID positive decreased – from 177 yesterday to 171 today. Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 138 yesterday to 139 today.
The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs remained the same at 41. The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators increased – from 21 yesterday to 25 today.
Across the system hospitals, 29 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 3,053.
