ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis area set a record for hospitalizations related to COVID-19 on Tuesday, according to the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force.
The task force said new hospital admissions increased from 55 to 74, which is the highest it has seen since it began tracking data in April.
During Monday's briefing, Dr. Alex Garza, the incident commander of the task force, called the hospitalization data concerning.
"Our hospitals and our ICU use continue to fill with patients, with COVID-19 patients and with regular patients. And those admissions continue daily. So I've said this multiple times over the past couple of weeks, but I think it bears repeating that we just can't continue on this trend," Dr. Garza said on Monday.
The following data are the combined figures from the four major health systems (BJC HealthCare, Mercy, SSM Health, St. Luke’s Hospital) that are part of the task force, for Nov. 3.
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) increased – from 55 yesterday to 74 today
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) increased from 61 yesterday to 63 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations increased – from 416 yesterday to 424 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations decreased – from 456 yesterday to 450 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 87 yesterday to 103 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs decreased – from 111 yesterday to 110 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators remained the same at 59 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 79 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 7,945.
The task force's next briefing is scheduled for Friday at 3:30 p.m.
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services reported more than 2,000 new COVID-19 cases for the sixth consecutive day.
On Tuesday, the department reported a total of 190,424 cases and 3064 deaths, an increase of 2,238 cases and 33 deaths.
Missouri has seen a 24.3% increase in cases in the last seven days when compared to the previous seven days. During that same time, the dashboard says testing decreased by 3.9%.
The dashboard said the state has a 14.2% positivity rate over the last seven days, the same as Monday and the highest of the pandemic. Previous updates from the department had higher average positivity for previous days, but the state has reported retroactively updated numbers for those days, which lowered the positivity rates for those days. The graph below uses the most recent numbers provided by the department.
In Illinois, the state's health department reported 430,018 cases and 9,878 deaths as of Tuesday, a single-day increase of 6,516 cases and 68 deaths.
The department reported 82,435 new tests in the last 24 hours. The seven-day average positivity rate in the state increased from 8.1% to 8.2%.
In the Metro East, the positivity rate reported by the state's health department increased from 9.7% to 10.2%. The positivity rate reported Tuesday, which represents the positivity rate in the region on Oct. 31, was the highest rate in the region since Aug. 28. The positivity rate reported by the state is delayed by 72 hours to improve accuracy.
