ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force leader said decreasing hospitalization numbers are a good sign, but the area is "not out of the woods yet."
The update comes after a weekend where the task force reported the lowest number of total hospitalizations since November. Saturday was the first day of fewer than 700 COVID-19 hospitalizations since Nov. 12, and on Sunday, the trend continued. The number of COVID-19 patients decreased from 697 to 681. On Monday, the number of hospitalizations decreased again, to 670.
Dr. Alex Garza, the incident commander of the task force, said they appreciate the improving numbers, but know there is still a lot of strain on the health care system.
"It's down from our peak period and it continues to come down, but it's still a lot of patients within our hospitals with COVID," he said. "And so, although we will celebrate the numbers coming down, we still have a lot of patients that we are taking care of in our hospitals and we're still not out of the woods, there's still a lot of virus out there."
As of Monday, task force hospitals were 81% full and ICUs were 86% full.
Dr. Garza started the briefing by breaking down the distribution of vaccine doses in Missouri. The first hurdle in that process is supply.
Although more than 3 million people are now eligible to get the coronavirus vaccine with the state opening the process to Phase 1B - Tier 2, Dr. Garza said the supply is nowhere near the demand.
According to the CDC, Missouri has received about 529,000 two-shot doses of the vaccine, which is about 16.5% of the people now eligible to receive the vaccine.
Dr. Garza said the initial groups cleared to get the vaccine were easier to keep track of and verify. As of Monday, most of the people eligible for the vaccine were health care workers and residents who were easier to keep track of. With a wider population now eligible, the process will require more registration by vaccine recipients. The process will be organized by public health departments and health care providers, with hospitals and doctors' offices administering most of the shots, Dr. Garza said.
If you have a primary care physician, you will be asked to register with your doctor. If you do not have a primary care physician, you'll register with your local health department and be vaccinated in the health care system or at a health department facility.
Dr. Garza said the vaccination process will be a large undertaking of organization, registration and distribution to make sure vaccines go out as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once all the initial groups are vaccinated, it will allow health care workers to become vaccinators, allowing the process to ramp up quickly, provided supply can keep up.
Dr. Garza said his description in the briefing was "broad strokes" and that the health care system and health departments would continue working to streamline the process.
The following data are the combined figures from the four major health systems (BJC HealthCare, Mercy, SSM Health, St. Luke’s Hospital) that are part of the task force, for January 18.
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) decreased - from 92 yesterday to 67 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) decreased – from 102 yesterday to 100 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations decreased - from 731 yesterday to 715 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations decreased – from 681 yesterday to 670 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 41 yesterday to 60 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs decreased – from 140 yesterday to 132 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators decreased – from 83 yesterday to 82 today.
- The number of COVID deaths increased – from 16 yesterday to 17 today.
- The seven-day moving average of COVID deaths increased – from 15 yesterday to 16 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 72 COVID-19 patients were discharged to home yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 16,555.
- Today, staffed bed hospital capacity is at 81%, an average across our task force hospitals. The ICU’s are at 86% of their total staffed bed capacity.
