ST. LOUIS — The leader of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force said the number of COVID-19 cases in St. Louis area hospitals has remained consistent for the last week, but the number of new cases in many of the area's largest jurisdictions saw fewer new cases last week.
During the task force's Monday afternoon briefing, Incident Commander Dr. Alex Garza said St. Louis, St. Louis County, St. Charles County and Jefferson County all saw fewer new COVID-19 cases last week as compared to the previous week.
On the Illinois side of the St. Louis area, however, multiple counties saw an increase in cases. Bond, Clinton, Jersey, Monroe and St. Clair County each reported more cases than the previous week.
The ZIP Codes that saw the most significant increase in cases were:
- 63017 — Chesterfield
- 62052 — Jerseyville
- 62258 — Mascoutah and Fayetteville
Overall, the reproductive number in the St. Louis area 0.95. Dr. Garza said anything below one means the spread of the virus is being limited by the community.
"That's good, it's below one," Dr. Garza said. "We'd like to get it even lower, but we'll take the 0.95 as well."
Below are Monday's task force numbers:
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) decreased – from 43 yesterday to 36 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) decreased – from 45 yesterday to 44 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations increased – from 298 yesterday to 305 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 305 yesterday to 313 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations decreased – from 96 yesterday to 64 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs decreased – from 92 yesterday to 87 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators decreased – from 52 yesterday to 49 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 36 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 5,134.
Before taking questions, Dr. Garza addressed what he called the "6% CDC report".
The CDC website reads "For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death."
This means 94 percent of people who died of the virus in the US had other conditions, which contributed to their death in addition to COVID-19.
This echoes information public health doctors have shared since the pandemic began that people with underlying health conditions are at higher risk of complications and death due to the coronavirus.
Dr. Garza said some stories claiming only 6% of reported COVID-19 deaths were from COVID-19 are "a gross misinterpretation of data."
"It's really misleading to say only 6% people have died from COVID, that's the completely wrong and, frankly, dangerous way to look at this data," Dr. Garza said.
Dr. Garza said this type of data is not unique to COVID-19. They see similar stats for influenza deaths, he said.
On Monday, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services reported 84,697 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 1,530 deaths, a single-day increase of 1,042 cases and 22 deaths.
Monday's case increase was 423 fewer than Sunday but 173 more than last Monday.
The department has reported 80 COVID-19 deaths in the last four days, including 32 newly reported deaths on Friday.
The department reported a total of 982,955 PCR — or polymerase chain reaction — tests Monday, a single-day increase of 8,718. On Monday, the state's positivity rate increased from 8.59% to 8.62%. According to the department's dashboard, the positivity rate for the last seven days was 12.6%.
On Monday, the state reported 906 COVID-19 hospitalizations across the state, down from 1,004 hospitalizations reported Sunday. The number of hospitalizations is delayed by 72 hours to ensure accuracy, so the number reported Monday represents hospitalizations on Aug. 28.
