ST. LOUIS — The Director of the CDC will be speaking about the pandemic at two places in the St. Louis area on Thursday.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky’s first stop is at Washington University’s medical campus. At 8 a.m. she will sit down and talk about where we are in the pandemic and give an update on some of the choices public health officials are facing.
Walensky will speak with Dr. William G. Powder, the co-director of the Division of Infectious Diseases. They're going to talk about domestic and global decisions that public officials will have to make soon and whether or not we’re truly emerging on the other side of this pandemic.
Walensky is a WashU alumna, graduating in 1991 with a bachelor's degree in biochemistry and molecular biology.
Later Thursday afternoon, she’ll be at CareSTL Health, an organization in St. Louis that creates opportunities for people in the area to get vaccinated and holds COVID clinics.
Dr. Walensky will be taking a tour of the facilities and speaking with the media. The tour starts at 1:30 p.m.
Her visit comes as the St. Louis area shows promising numbers when it comes to COVID.
Missouri is seeing the lowest number of new cases since last June.
There are 3,818 new cases this week, down from 5,153 before.
Illinois is also improving, with 12,017 new cases this week, down from 14,697 last week. That's the lowest the state has recorded since last July.
St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force said hospitalization numbers are getting close to pre-omicron levels in the metro area. ICU and ventilator numbers are also going down.
The numbers show that, slowly, more people in the metro area are getting vaccinated.