ST. LOUIS — Hospital numbers in the St. Louis area continued to improve Monday as St. Louis and St. Louis County take another step in lifting some restrictions put in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
Dr. Alex Garza, incident commander with the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force, said the reopening process is possible because of the steps taken by the public.
"Now, this is possible because of the steps that we've all taken in the past few months, to socially distance ourselves, to use proper hand hygiene and the wearing of masks in public," Dr. Garza said. "And it's these practices that will help us to open up and go back to the things that we like to do."
While some of the day-to-day hospital numbers increased, the seven-day averages of new admissions and total admissions continued to drop.
The full breakdown of data trends from the task force is below.
- New hospital admissions: 5, down from 14
- Seven-day moving average of new hospital admissions: 15, down from 17
- Hospitalizations: 246, up from 241
- Seven-day moving average of hospitalizations: 251, down from 255
- Patients in the ICU: 66, same as Sunday
- Patients on ventilators: 42, up from 39
In addition to the data normally provided by the task force, Dr. Garza also presented data showing that black communities are at a higher risk of testing positive and ending up in the hospital due to COVID-19.
According to task force data, Dr. Garza said black residents in the St. Louis area are about four times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 and more than twice as likely to end up in the hospital due to COVID-19.
Dr. Garza said 60% of black patients who test positive for COVID-19 get admitted into the hospital, compared to about 40% of white patients.
"Again, this tells a story that we've said before, that COVID disproportionately affects the black community much more than the non-black community, and we've finally been able to generate some numbers in order to show that discrepancy," Dr. Garza said.
Sunday's update:
The St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force reported a decrease in new hospital admissions for COVID-19 over the last 24 hours. It also recorded a slight uptick in the number of patients in ICUs and on ventilators.
Across BJC, Mercy, SSM and St. Luke's hospitals, new hospital admissions dropped from 23 Saturday to 14 Sunday. However, the seven-day moving average of hospitalizations increased from 15 on Saturday to 17 on Sunday. The data is lagged two days, the task force noted.
COVID-19 hospitalizations increased from 235 on Saturday to 241 on Sunday.
The number of patients in the ICU increased from 61 on Saturday to 66 today. The number of patients on ventilators increased from 35 Saturday to 39 Sunday.
Across the four hospital systems, 9 patients were discharged Saturday, bringing the cumulative number of COVID-19 patients discharged to 2,572.