ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force warned hospital admissions -- even among young people -- is reaching levels it hasn't seen in months.
"We saw 46 admissions, which is a very high number. And in fact, we haven't seen a number this high for a couple of months," task force incident commander Dr. Alex Garza said during the briefing Friday.
The Missouri Department of Health and Human Services reported 1,485 new cases of COVID-19 Friday. This is the 11th day in a row the state has reported more than 1,000 cases.
Here are the new numbers for task force hospitals as of Friday. Every metric increased from Thursday:
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) increased – from 38 yesterday to 46 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) increased – from 38 yesterday to 39 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations increased – from 243 yesterday to 245 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations increased - from 238 yesterday to 248 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 78 yesterday to 106 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs increased – from 61 yesterday to 63 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators increased – from 27 yesterday to 29 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 41 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 3,879.
Dr. Garza said the number of younger people contracting COVID-19 continues to rise, and that just because younger people have seemed to adapt better to the virus, many are still ending up in the hospital.
The task force shared the charts below illustrating the rise in younger patients and cases.
On Thursday, the department reported a cumulative total of 48,834 cases and 1,233 deaths, an increase of 2,084 cases and 13 deaths.
In a tweet, the department said Thursday's record increase and the record high numbers of the last 10 days were "because our data entry staff has worked diligently to clear the backlog and today’s update will be the last with additional cases."
The department said Friday's update will be only cases confirmed in the last 24 hours, but also said future reports will be affected by backlogs until they can be cleared.
The number of new COVID-19 patients remained below 40 Thursday, and most of the other numbers tracked by the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force decreased or remained consistent.
