ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. — A federal team is on its way to St. Louis to help with COVID-19 response.
The group of medics will assist with the influx of patients inundating Christian Hospital in North St. Louis County.
FEMA's U.S. Navy is deploying a 44-person team of military medical personnel to Christian Hospital on Wednesday.
The crew includes doctors, nurses, and respiratory therapists.
The Missouri State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) coordinated the deployment.
SEMA was also able to help bring a 17-member Health Care Task Force with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support staff at Research Medical Center in Kansas City.
That team has been there since Jan. 7 by assisting with emergency department decompression and was granted an extension to continue providing care through Feb. 4.
SEMA confirms there are only two federal teams in hospitals across the state of Missouri.
As for the team coming to St. Louis, the plan is to arrive Wednesday, and then later on that week, they will probably start seeing patients.
This comes after the St. Louis Pandemic Task Force requested federal aid for staffing for 11 hospitals in the area. This included four area Mercy hospitals, five SSM Health hospitals, BJC HealthCare Christian Hospital and one St. Luke’s Hospital facility.
However, with limited resources, BJC Healthcare Christian Hospital was the only facility picked.
It's because of the overwhelming number of COVID patients and the need to provide resources to an under-served community.
The hope is that by adding resources to North St. Louis County that other facilities will benefit as well.
"North County has been hit the hardest disproportionately higher than the other parts of the county with COVID patients," said Rick Stevens, President of Christian Hospital. "We have the busiest emergency room here in the state of Missouri. So hopefully, we'll get some resources for the emergency room critical care. A lot of the patients coming in are going to our critical care unit or ICU unit and that's taxing."
Mix that in with a decrease in staff.
"We've seen a lot of our staff get sick," Stevens said.
As of Friday, 100 out of 1,800 were out.
"Anytime we have that high of a number of staff members out that affects us and how we provide care," he said.
The helping hands will assist many, who are just exhausted.
"We have a lot of staff that are truly burnt out," Stevens said.
The federal team will be stationed at Christian Hospital for about a month.