ST. LOUIS — COVID-19 hospitalization data in the St. Louis area continues to be concerning as it keeps climbing, Dr. Alex Garza, the incident commander of the task force, said during a Monday briefing.
"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.
Dr. Garza said some of the task force's hospitals are already at capacity and some are even overcapacity. Those hospitals are having to slow down on some elective procedures to make room.
"Now, we don't want to go back to shelter in place, but in order to make sure that that doesn't happen, we have to get the virus under control," Dr. Garza said.
The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions is the highest it's ever been during the coronavirus pandemic with 61.
Hospitalizations also hit its highest number since May 6 with 456.
Over the weekend, Missouri and Illinois both set coronavirus records Saturday as hospitalization numbers remained high in the St. Louis area.
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. 2.
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) decreased – from 61 yesterday to 55 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) increased from 60 yesterday to 61 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations increased – from 407 yesterday to 416 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 416 yesterday to 456 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations increased – from 85 yesterday to 87 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs decreased – from 113 yesterday to 111 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators remained the same at 59 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 29 COVID-19 patients were discharged yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 7,866.