ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force reported encouraging numbers on hospitalization in the area Monday.
All the metrics shown during the task force briefing showed the number of people needing hospital treatment continues to decrease.
Dr. Alex Garza, the incident commander of the task force, said 16 new COVID-19 patients were admitted to St. Louis area hospitals Saturday. Dr. Garza said that was a new low since the task force began tracking the data. The number is lagged two days to ensure the data includes all the COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Garza said the 7-day moving average for new patients has steadily decreased since early April with "a few upticks."
Dr. Garza said the total number of people in the hospital continued its downward trend Monday as well. For the first time since early April, there are fewer than 500 COVID-19 or suspected COVID-19 patients in area hospitals. The number of hospitalized patients decreased from 505 to 493.
"As this number continues to come down, it helps us be confident in the steps that we're taking," Dr. Garza said, "and that the health care systems are going to be ready and able to take care of COVID patients without becoming overwhelmed."
The total number of patients needing treatment in the ICU and the number of patients on ventilators both decreased as well.
There are 131 COVID-19 patients in the ICU, down from 140 on Sunday, and there are 98 on ventilators, down from 111 on Sunday.
The hospital system discharged 11 more COVID-19 patients Sunday, bringing the total number of patients released to 1,674.
"These data are really starting to show some of the good progress that we've made from all those sacrifices that we've done over throughout the weeks," Dr. Garza said. "However, we can't become complacent, either, by all this good news."
Dr. Garza said the task force will continue to analyze the data beyond May 18, when St. Louis and St. Louis County are scheduled to loosen COVID-19 restrictions, to ensure the numbers do not creep back up.
Dr. Garza said the task force is working on a plan to conduct a prevalence study with antibody testing in the St. Louis area. By testing people at random to see if they have antibodies, the test would determine how many people have the virus.
In earlier briefings, Dr. Garza said the task force believed 70,000 people would be infected with the virus by the end of April, but many would not realize they had it. This type of study would provide a more detailed estimate of that number.
The task force will not hold a briefing Tuesday afternoon, but will release updated numbers.
