ST. LOUIS — Missouri's health department has not updated its COVID-19 dashboard after a computer error over the weekend showed an incorrect spike in new cases.
In the St. Louis area, nearly all COVID-19 metrics saw increases, including new hospital admissions, according to the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force.
The task force Tuesday provided the following data from the four major health systems, BJC HealthCare, Mercy, SSM Health and St. Luke’s Hospital:
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) increased from 30* yesterday to 44 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) remained the same at 41 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations increased – from 272 yesterday to 280 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 278 yesterday to 298 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations decreased – from 86 yesterday to 76 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs increased – from 72 yesterday to 73 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators increased – from 38 yesterday to 42 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 48 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 6,816.
As of 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services' COVID-19 dashboard has not been updated since Saturday.
On Saturday, the department dashboard showed 5,066 new COVID-19 cases, which the department later said was due to a "data extract error".
The department did not provide a reason on Saturday as to why the number of new cases was unusually high.
"A database extract error on Oct. 10 resulted in an incorrect inflation of the number of reported cases going back over several days, suggesting that 5,020 cases had been added in 24 hours," a release from the department said Sunday.
The numbers reported Saturday still appear on the dashboard although it is unclear if they are accurate. The release said the issues were limited to cumulative reporting on the dashboard.