FRIDAY UPDATES: Pettis County records 24 new COVID-19 cases; Lowe’s to require masks
UPDATE 6:03 P.M.: Pettis County led Mid-Missouri counties in new COVID-19 cases Friday.
The county health department reported 24 new cases for a total of 216. The county has 76 active cases.
Two Pettis County residents have died of COVID-19-related complications, with the latest coming Sunday. Pettis, like many other Mid-Missouri counties, has seen a surge in cases recently. The county has recorded 42 new cases since Monday.
Boone County logged the second-most new cases with 23.
Cole County reported eight new cases Friday to reach 181. However, county health officials reported three fewer active cases for a total of 50 as recoveries offset new positives.
Other area counties reporting new cases Friday include Audrain, Morgan and Moniteau.
Lowe's to require masks
Home improvement retailer Lowe’s will require masks in all of its stores beginning Monday.
The company announced the decision Friday, citing public health officials’ recommendation that people wear masks to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Cases have surged across the country this summer.
“For the safety of everyone in our stores, we ask that customers wear masks, and to make this new standard less restrictive, we will make masks available to those who need them," Lowe’s President and CEO Marvin Ellison said.
Lowe’s made employees wear masks in May and has required them for customers in stores where local regulations require face coverings. That includes Columbia, where a city ordinance required them starting last Friday.
UPDATE 4:25 P.M.: Boone County reported 23 new cases of COVID-19 on Friday, continuing a trend of falling daily totals since a record was set last weekend.
The new cases bring the county’s total to 843 since the pandemic began. A case that had been counted on Sunday was reassigned to a different county, the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services reported.
New cases have declined since a surge at the end of last week that included Saturday’s record total of 53 new cases. The five-day rolling average of new daily cases dropped Friday to 18.4 after peaking Saturday at 42.2.
The positive rate among those tested for the week that ended Thursday was 6.2 percent, according to the department’s online COVID-19 hub. That’s down from 16 percent the week before.
The health department said earlier Friday that the numbers make officials cautiously optimistic. The trend will need to continue to be considered a success, they warned.
Hospitalizations in Boone County have reached new highs for COVID-19 patients after being in the single digits for much of the pandemic. The health department reported 29 patients in Boone County hospitals with COVID-19 as of Friday. Six are in intensive care and two are on ventilators.
However, hospitals are reporting no shortages of supplies, staff or beds.
The health department says 290 cases are active, a drop of 24 compared to Thursday. The department reports 550 people have recovered from the virus.
Another 554 close contacts of infected people are in quarantine.
MU furloughs 671 more workers
The University of Missouri announced 671 new furloughs Friday.
MU posts weekly personnel actions taken to save money amid the COVID-19 pandemic each Friday on its website. The information is current as of the previous Wednesday. The totals combine actions at MU and University of Missouri Health Care.
MU in this week’s post said it had furloughed 3,598 workers total to save $4.38 million.
Another eight workers were laid off, bringing total layoffs to 173 and pushing the total money saved to $7.3 million.
An extra 195 workers took pay cuts during the period covered by Friday’s update for a total of 2,317. The university says those pay cuts have saved $5.54 million.
MU is continuing to look for cost reductions as the pandemic continues to affect state revenue and create uncertainty for higher education ahead of a new school year. Gov. Mike Parson has already withheld about $28 million from higher education in the current fiscal year, which started July 1.
That’s in addition to a $27.1 million loss in state funding in the last fiscal year.
UPDATE 4 P.M.: The Missouri State Fair will be canceled this year for just the second time in its history.
Fair organizers said in a news release that they're canceling the event, citing the need to protect public health and a lack of vendor participation.
Instead, fair organizers will host a youth livestock show from Aug. 13 to Aug. 23. The show will keep alive the tradition of the fair, which started in 1901 as an agriculture showcase, according to a news release.
According to the release, Gov. Mike Parson and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services decided to cancel the fair to reduce the number of people working at the fairgrounds.
"Best practices for sanitation and public health will still be implemented during the youth livestock show," the fair said in a news release.
A fair spokeswoman told ABC 17 News that the number of people the fair brings to the fairgrounds -- about 350,000 -- combined with current COVID-19 case numbers prompted the decision.
The release says fair vendors also would have had to limit or cancel their participation because of the pandemic. Those limits would have degraded the quality of the fair experience, the spokeswoman said.
Some concessions will still be on site for the youth livestock show.
Refunds will be issued. Exhibitors can still reserve campsites, according to the release.
Parson had last month committed to having the state fair this year but with social distancing measures in place. However, Missouri's COVID-19 cases have surged since then, with the state setting regular records for new daily cases.
UPDATE 2:25 P.M.: Missouri recorded one of its highest daily case totals of the pandemic Friday.
The state reported 868 new cases for a total of 31,290 since the pandemic began. The state reported eight new deaths for a total of 1,121.
The new case total, while among the largest of the pandemic, is only the third-highest this week. The state set a new-case record Tuesday with 936. The next day, the state reported 888 new cases.
The number reported Friday continues a trend of increasing new case totals in Missouri. State officials say many of the new cases can be attributed to regional outbreaks in Kansas City, St. Louis and southwest Missouri. They also say many of the new cases are in young people who are less at risk for the worst complications of COVID-19.
However, they also have cautioned that young people can spread the virus to those who are more vulnerable.
Cases have also risen steadily this week in several Mid-Missouri counties, with multiple counties reporting deaths from the disease. The latest death was reported Thursday in Randolph County.
The county with the highest percentage growth in cases in the state is Howard County, according to the state dashboard.
New data on state hospitalizations has not been available for two the past two days. The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services says in a message on its COVID-19 dashboard that a change in the platform the White House uses to report hospitalizations has made the state data unavailable.
Missouri's hospitalizations for COVID-19 have been on an upward trend starting in late June. The most recent data, from Sunday, showed 875 patients hospitalized with the disease. The peak was 984 on May 5, according to the state's online COVID-19 dashboard.
The state reports nearly 538,000 Missourians have been tested, with 5.6 percent testing positive.
UPDATE 1:55 P.M.: Stephens College says it has laid off 30 workers, citing challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The private college in Columbia announced the layoffs in a news release Friday. The move will save Stephens about $1.2 million. Layoffs affected programs and departments campus-wide, according to the release.
“Stephens worked energetically to retain its workforce over the past several months, even as many institutions moved more quickly to layoffs and furloughs,” Stephens President Dr. Dianne Lynch said in the release. “But the pandemic continues to present extraordinary challenges for all of us."
The layoffs were necessary after other expense reductions were not enough, Lynch said.
Employees will begin a staggered return to campus Monday and all will be back on campus by Aug. 3, according to the release. Students are scheduled to arrive Aug. 16.
The Home Depot to require masks
Shoppers at The Home Depot will have to wear face coverings starting Wednesday.
The company is the latest major retailer to implement a mask requirement as COVID-19 cases grow nationwide. Public health officials say masks are one of the best ways to slow the spread of novel coronavirus.
About 85 percent of Home Depot stores already require masks because of local laws such as Columbia's mask ordinance, the company said in a news release.
Stores will provide masks to shoppers who do not have them.
UPDATE 12:08 P.M.: Boone County's rate of positive COVID-19 tests dropped 10 percent in the last week compared to the week before.
The Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services said Friday that the rate for the week that ended Thursday was a little above 6 percent.
That's compared to a 16 percent rate from July 3 to July 9.
The department said on Twitter that officials are "cautiously optimistic about this decrease, as there may be several factors as to why this occurred."
Among those factors could be more people seeking tests, including those who feel they might have been exposed despite no close contact or symptoms, the department said.
Boone County has experienced a surge in cases after slow growth through April May and part of June. The county set a record for new daily cases Saturday, logging 53.
The surge has led to the extension of the county's current reopening phase and an ordinance requiring face coverings in Columbia.
ORIGINAL: As the number of new coronavirus cases continues to climb in the Kansas City area, a spike in deaths is creating even more worry.
The Kansas City Star reports that the region on Thursday cited 11 deaths from COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. That was most of any single day since the pandemic began. Nine of the deaths were in Jackson County, one in Kansas City, Missouri, and one in Johnson County, Kansas.
The previous single-day high for the region was eight deaths reported on June 20.
Mid-Missouri counties reported several deaths this week, including one Thursday in Randolph County.
