ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force is changing the way it reports the hospital data in the St. Louis area.
In a Monday afternoon briefing, Dr. Alex Garza, the head of the task force, said they would be separating out the data of suspected COVID-19 patients after many of the suspected patients tested negative.
"We will now be showing you our confirmed COVID-19 admissions data. And this chart will not include our suspected COVID patients," Dr. Garza said Monday. "The reason behind this is that most of those suspected covered patients turned out to be negative for the virus, and so we felt like this would be a much more accurate representation of the data."
The data that will be affected by the change is total hospitalizations, daily ICU patients and patients on ventilators.
Here's a breakdown of the latest numbers from the task force:
- New hospital admissions (data lagged two days) increased 13 Sunday to 16 Monday.
- Seven-day moving average of new hospital admissions (data lagged two days) remained the same as the 16 reported Sunday.
- Total hospitalizations of confirmed COVID-19 patients increased from 127 Sunday to 149 on Monday. The number of suspected COVID-19 patients in area hospitals was 106 Monday.
- Seven-day moving average of confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations stayed the same as Sunday, 137.
- The number of confirmed COVID-19 patients in the ICUs increased, from 31 Sunday to 35 Monday. Nine suspected COVID-19 patients were in the ICU.
- The number of confirmed COVID-19 patients on ventilators decreased from 23 on Sunday to 22 on Monday. Three suspected COVID-19 patients were on ventilators Monday.
Across the system hospitals, 14 COVID-19 patients were discharged on Saturday, bringing the to 2,868.
On Monday, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services reported 468 new cases, bringing the total in the state to 21,043. The health department also reported one new death in the state, bringing the total to 998.
The state also reported 6,233 new tests, bringing the state's total to 367,406. The state's positivity rate increased slightly Monday from 5.70% to 5.73%.
The first time the Missouri health department reported 300 new cases in a single day was June 20. Since then, the state has reported fewer than 300 new cases twice.
The increase in new cases over the last 10 days has not significantly impacted hospitalization numbers in St. Louis or across the state.
The Missouri health department's dashboard said there were 599 total hospitalizations related to COVID-19 in the state, a single-day increase of 187, but 81 hospitalizations fewer than the state reported on Saturday. The data is lagged 72 hours to ensure the accuracy of the data.
For a full county-by-county breakdown of cases in the state, use our interactive map. Some of the local county numbers come from local health departments and may not match data from the DHSS.
