SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Springfield-area health officials have withdrawn their request for a temporary site to handle an overflow of COVID-19 patients because they said it couldn't be put up quickly enough amid a case surge that has led to renewed calls for vaccinations and fights over mask mandates elsewhere in the state.
The Springfield-Greene County Health Department requested the site on July 14. While waiting for approval, the city's two hospitals hired additional staff and reused existing space, the agency said in a news release.
"Because this additional capacity allows us to address our current surge, and knowing that an alternate care site was at least another week away from being operational, there is no longer an immediate need for an alternate care site," the release said.
Republican Gov. Mike Parson said in a news release that the state also helped by sending in extra ambulance crews, which transported about 90 COVID-19 patients to hospitals outside the Springfield area. And he noted that the state set up a center to provide infusions of monoclonal antibodies, which generally are used for people who aren't hospitalized but might be at higher risk for complications.
Kaitlyn McConnell, the system director for public relations at CoxHealth, said it initially was believed that the request for the overflow site would take around five days, the Springfield News-Leader reported.
"We appreciate the government's efforts to serve, but in this case, response lagged too far behind the need," she said.
Missouri ranks fourth nationally in the most new cases per capita in the past 14 days. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in the state has risen over the past two weeks from 1,771.86 on July 14 to 2,450.43 on Wednesday, according to data from John Hopkins University.
State workers are among the infected, with the Department of Corrections listing 52 employees as positive. There also are 45 active COVID-19 cases in the Harry S Truman State Office Building near the Capitol, said Chris Moreland, spokesman for Parson's Office of Administration.
Robert Knodell, the acting director of the Department of Health and Senior Services, said in a letter to thousands of state employees that vaccines can help bring the pandemic to an end and criticized widespread misinformation, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
"Enough is enough," Knodell said. "The rhetoric from these individuals — the myths, conspiracy theories, the rumors with no valid context — is a bunch of baloney."
In the Springfield area, Republican and Democratic lawmakers are joining together to sponsor a vaccination clinic Saturday.
"It's been heartbreaking in our community when people lose their lives," said Republican Sen. Lincoln Hough, "when right now, with the vaccine, it's largely unnecessary."
Erik Frederick, chief administrative officer of Mercy Springfield, tweeted that its 130 COVID-19 patients included six children, four younger than 10.
"100% unvaccinated because they are not eligible," he wrote. "But we are."
The city's pubic school district announced that masks would be required for the fall for all students and staff. The district previously required students to start wearing them again for summer school.
And at least three Kansas City area school districts — North Kansas City, Center and Park Hill — also announced that masks would be required indoors, The Kansas City Star reported. The mandates are effective this coming Monday, when a mask mandate begins in Kansas City.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has threatened to sue over the Kansas City mandate. His office also is challenging mask mandates in St. Louis County and St. Louis city. A hearing had been scheduled for Friday, but St. Louis County successfully transferred Schmitt's lawsuit to federal court, arguing that Schmitt's legal challenges are constitutional questions of free speech and protections against unequal treatment, the Post-Dispatch reported.
Schmitt described it as a "a sad delay tactic" in a tweet.
Also Friday, a federal appeals court rejected an appeal challenging the constitutionality of St. Louis County's April 2020 stay-at-home order. The suit claimed the order imposed illegal restrictions on religious gatherings.
Amid the legal fights, COVID-19 fatalities also are on the rise, with the victims including five people who have died in the past month alone at two Stoddard County nursing facilities, the Southeast Missourian reported.
Stoddard County Public Health Center director Ben Godwin attributed a spike in cases to decreased social distancing and a low vaccination rate.
Just 30.5% of the county's residents have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, well below the state average of 47.9% and the national average of 57.2%, state and federal data shows.
"We're offering vaccinations on a weekly basis here," he said, "but very, very few people are getting their vaccinations right now."