ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis COVID-19 Pandemic Task Force led by Incident Commander Dr. Alex Garza gave another update on the coronavirus in the St. Louis area on Friday. Dr. Garza focused on the state of vaccine distribution in Missouri during the briefing.
Dr. Garza and the task force broke down how vaccines are being distributed in the state.
"We were informed we will be receiving around 15,600 doses every week for those 'high-through put' healthcare systems. For this region C (The St. Louis region)," Dr. Garza said. "So as you can imagine those numbers of doses gets stretched especially thin."
"The amount of people eligible for vaccines right now is much, much larger than the supply of vaccines that is currently available."
Dr. Garza said vaccinations are moving from Phase 1A and 1B Tier 1 (healthcare, long-term care, nursing homes and first responders), into Phase 1B Tier 2. Tier 2 would include people 65 years or older, and people aged 18-64 with chronic conditions.
Dr. Garza also released new data on total vaccines administered by racial breakdown.
So far in the Region C St. Louis area, 69% of those vaccinated so far have been White, 8% have been Black, 3% have been Asian, 9% have been of another race and 11% have been unknown.
You can watch Dr. Garza's entire Friday briefing by clicking here.
Dr. Garza also shared the vaccine registration sites for all of the task force hospitals. You can click on the hospitals listed below to be directed to their corresponding vaccine sites.
The Task Force did share some encouraging news when it comes to the latest hospital numbers.
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 Feb. 5.
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) decreased - from 70 yesterday to 52 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospital admissions (data lagged two days) decreased – from 63 yesterday to 61 today.
- The seven-day moving average of hospitalizations decreased - from 484 yesterday to 468 today.
- Inpatient confirmed COVID positive hospitalizations decreased – from 433 yesterday to 419 today.
- Inpatient suspected COVID positive hospitalizations decreased – from 38 yesterday to 28 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients in the ICUs decreased – from 88 yesterday to 82 today.
- The number of confirmed COVID positive patients on ventilators decreased – from 66 yesterday to 59 today.
- The number of COVID deaths increased – from 8 yesterday to 9 today.
- The seven-day moving average of COVID deaths decreased – from 9 yesterday to 8 today.
- Across the system hospitals, 90 COVID-19 patients were discharged to home yesterday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 18,176
Today, staffed bed hospital capacity is at 83%, an average across our task force hospitals. The ICU’s are at 85% of their total staffed bed capacity.