The St. Louis region is still on the trajectory to reach its peak in the COVID-19 pandemic around April 25 — where anywhere from 600 to 1,500 people could be hospitalized at any one time.
“What’s concerning is anticipating what will happen when we do have to start relaxing some of the social distancing and the shelter-in-place rules,” said Dr. Alex Garza, chief medical officer for SSM Health, on Saturday, April 18. “Looking forward is more what concerns me than looking at the present data.”
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.
Garza reported on April 18 that there were 683 people currently hospitalized within the four medical systems. Of those, 176 were in the intensive care unit (ICU) and 136 were on ventilators.
On the positive side, there were 49 discharged from the hospital.
Just two weeks ago, the region was on the worst case trajectory, and then the number of cases “made the sudden right-hand turn.” The dates match up that it was the shelter-in-place measures that appear to have made that impact and are still being effective. However, Garza said that projecting the future of the pandemic is similar to hurricane forecasting. Like a hurricane, they know where it is, but they don’t know where it’s going, he said.
Some counties in the metropolitan area, including Franklin County, are anxious to reopen the economy as soon as the government’s stay-at-home order expires May 3.
Garza said he’s cautious about taking those steps to decrease social isolation and distancing.
“The virus is still out there, it’s still circulating in the community and we haven’t developed a substantial number of immune people in our community,” he said. “We still have a sizable number of people in the population who are susceptible. I don’t think we should equate the number of cases with the virus going away. We have to be very cautious.”