ST. LOUIS — The leader of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force said the region is starting to see a rebound in newly confirmed cases as testing numbers return to pre-holiday levels.
Dr. Alex Garza, the incident commander of the task force, said case numbers in nearly every county in the St. Louis area reported more cases in the last seven days when compared to the previous seven days. Dr. Garza said that increase was expected as testing ramped back up, but it will still be a few weeks before they can figure out if the holiday will bring the anticipated spike in cases.
Dr. Garza said hospitalizations have been trending in the right direction, but admission numbers in the St. Louis area remained high while case numbers dipped. He said an increase could erase progress made in the area.
"Now we continue to be averaging anywhere from around 90 to 100 new patients a day, and that's still a really significant number of people being admitted every day to the hospital particularly when we're still waiting to see if we're going to have any surge from the holidays," he said. "So if the number of new COVID patients increases because of the holidays, any progress really that we've made since that peak time is going to become undone."
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 11.
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) remained the same at 81 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) decreased – from 99 yesterday to 94 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations decreased - from 787 yesterday to 780 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 746 yesterday to 782 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 68 yesterday to 70 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs decreased – from 163 yesterday to 156 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators decreased – from 98 yesterday to 94 today.
- The number of COVID deaths increased – from 9 yesterday to 20 today.
- The seven-day moving average of COVID deaths increased – from 17 yesterday to 18 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 55 COVID-19 patients were discharged to home yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 15,736.
- Today, staffed bed hospital capacity is at 83%, an average across our task force hospitals. The ICU’s are at 83% of their total staffed bed capacity.
In Missouri, the state's health department reported 424,986 cases and 5,951 deaths as of Monday, a single-day increase of 1,659 cases and three deaths.
The department also reported 3,830,281 total PCR tests administered, a single-day increase of 11,128 new tests in the last 24 hours. It is the fewest number of new tests administered in a day since Jan 4.
According to the department's dashboard, the state's seven-day positivity average decreased Monday from 18.8% to 18.2%.
In Illinois, the state's health department reported 1,033,526 cases and 17,627 deaths as of Monday, a single-day increase of 4,776 cases and 53 deaths.
The department also reported 14,169,986 total tests administered, a single-day increase of 66,697 new tests in the last 24 hours. It is the fewest number of new tests administered in a day since Jan 4.
The state's seven-day positivity average decreased Monday from 7.9% to 7.6%.
In the Metro East, the seven-day positivity average decreased from 12.6% to 11.9%. If the positivity rate in the region remains below 12%, restrictions could loosen in the region.
