ST. LOUIS — The head of the St. Louis area’s hospital task force praised St. Louis area residents for their work to flatten the curve, but also said the work isn’t done quite yet.
“It’s absolutely apparent to me that we’ve done a fantastic job of stopping that spread,” said Dr. Alex Garza, incident commander of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force.
He said the social distancing measures, stay-at-home orders, sacrifices and dedication everyone in the community has displayed have helped limit the spread of COVID-19 in the area.
“I believe unequivocally that we’ve saved lives in the community because of that,” he added.
But the doctor also said now that the curve is flattening, we can’t just stop lift all the restrictions that have been put in place over the last six weeks. Dr. Garza said the St. Louis area needs to keep up the healthy habits for “a little bit longer until we can start seeing those cases drop.”
“We’ve shown the country what St. Louis can do, and we need to keep that up moving forward,” Dr. Garza said. “It gives us confidence as we being to plan for that safe, gradual reopening of the economy. It’s what really makes that possible.”
On Thursday, Dr. Garza said the new data showing the flattening of the curve shows promise. He said the task force is optimistic the trend will continue downward.
With that in mind, he said the St. Louis area can begin developing plans to reopen the economy and loosen restrictions — as long as the transmission rate, or the rate that the virus spread in the area — stays low.
“The goals are to keep transmission low. We can begin to gradually reopen the economy, but the goal has always got to be keeping transmission low. And that's doing all the things that we're currently doing, while relaxing some of the restrictions. And that's how we can safely and gradually open back the economy,” he said Thursday.
On Friday, there were 654 COVID-19 patients in St. Louis area hospitals, which is a decrease of 31 people from Thursday. There were 164 people in intensive care units, marking no change from Thursday. There were 112 people on ventilators, which is down five people from Thursday.
Over the last 24 hours, 60 COVID-19 patients were released from local hospitals, bringing the total to 1,320 patients discharged to recover at home since the first coronavirus case was confirmed in the area.
“That’s really exciting to see that large of a number of patients being discharged,” Dr. Garza said.