ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force reported a slight increase in hospital admissions related to COVID-19 on Wednesday.
The task force's incident commander Dr. Alex Garza said the area seems to be moving in the wrong direction. He also urged everyone watching the daily briefing to wear a face mask.
St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson held an afternoon briefing on Wednesday. She called the hospital and hospitalization numbers worrisome.
"City of St. Louis numbers in terms of number of cases are still pretty good. However, these hospital and hospitalization numbers are worrisome," Krewson said.
Dr. Garza also spoke about COVID-19 testing to clear up confusion in the community.
"There seems to be some confusion out in the community, particularly with either schools or with private businesses, about the need to retest for COVID-19," Dr. Garza said.
He said once a patient has been diagnosed with COVID-19, they do not need to retest for COVID-19 in order to go back to work or school. "The CDC is very clear about this," he added.
"This is what's called simply a symptom-based strategy. And so after you have gone through your 10 days of isolation and quarantine, have not had fever for 24 hours, then you're cleared to go back and resume normal activities," Dr. Garza said.
"So you shouldn't require a repeat test to go back to school or to go back to work," he added. "This is because of the kind of tests used to diagnose COVID-19 - polymerase chain reaction test (PCR.) The test looks for a genetic material from the virus.
"So all I can tell you really is that it's found genetic material," Dr. Garza said.
He added that what the test can't detect is if the person is infectious or not.
"We know from the data that we have patients that can have dead virus hanging around that will have a positive test because there's still genetic material. However, they're not infectious, so they don't pass live virus on to anybody and they can't infect anybody."
"And so, again, CDC is very clear about this. We don't need to retest people once they've cleared their quarantine for 10 days from when they became sick or from when they tested positive. It what it does is it consumes valuable resources, valuable testing resources, and it's really completely unnecessary."
"So please refrain from doing that retesting in order to get back to work or back to school," Dr. Garza said.
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 September 30.
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) increased from 37* yesterday to 39 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) remained the same at 38* today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations increased – from 268 yesterday to 269 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 282 yesterday to 284 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations decreased - from 87 yesterday to 78 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs decreased - from 79 yesterday to 78 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators decreased – from 51 yesterday to 50 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 38 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 6,313.
*Tuesday’s hospital admission data changed from 36 to 37 which changed the seven-day moving average to 38. We apologize for any issues this may cause.