ST. LOUIS — St. Louis hospitals are filling up with coronavirus patients at an alarming rate, and experts say many of those patients are coming from other areas of the state.
Meanwhile, the Kansas City area over the past week recorded its highest number of deaths over a one-week period, with more than 80 people dying from COVID-19.
Missouri is among several states across the U.S. seeing a spike in confirmed cases and hospitalizations related to the coronavirus. The state health department on Tuesday announced 1,695 additional confirmed cases and 28 more deaths. The state has reported 172,717 cases and 2,838 deaths since the pandemic began.
Hospitalizations statewide remain high, with 1,407 people in Missouri hospitals with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 illnesses as of Saturday, the most recent data available.
St. Louis-area hospital officials are urging people to take precautions to slow the spread of the virus, warning that the region's hospitals are at about 90% capacity.
The St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force on Monday reported a seven-day average of 360 COVID-19 patients in hospitals, the worst since May. The seven-day average of new COVID-19 admissions was 52, the highest since early April.
"Think about what this means to you and your family member, if you get sick," said Dr. Alex Garza, who heads the task force. "Will there be a hospital to be able to care for you? Will they have space for your family member? Will the doctors, and the nurses, and the techs be on top of their game, or will they be exhausted and fatigued?"
In the early days of the pandemic, most people hospitalized in the St. Louis region were local. Now, "We're getting patients from everywhere," Garza said. "We have requests for transfers from hundreds of miles away."
Across the state, the region that includes Kansas City along with Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas has recorded 735 deaths since the pandemic began. But The most recent seven-day period was the most deadly, according to data compiled by the Kansas City Star.
The newspaper reported 81 deaths for the period of Oct. 20-26, and 163 deaths since the start of October.
"We are now what looks like moving into our third wave of this outbreak and that's very, very concerning," said Rex Archer, director of the Kansas City Health Department. "We're very concerned about this surge and as we move more and more indoors, this is going to become even more problematic."
