FRIDAY UPDATES: Columbia city officials to provide community briefing on COVID-19 Wednesday afternoon

Columbia city officials will be hosting a community briefing Wednesday at 3 p.m., to discuss recent trends and the current status of COVID-19, the vaccine rollout in the area, and the next health order for Columbia and Boone County.

Columbia Mayor Brian Treece, other public officials and representatives from local health care organizations will be present.

The briefing will be held in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 701 E. Broadway.

The briefing will be live-streamed on ABC17News.com and on the ABC17News app.

Callaway County Health Department opens vaccination clinics to Phase 1B Tier 2

Callaway County Health Department is opening up its vaccination clinics to those in Phase 1B Tier 2 starting next week.

Phase 1B Tier 2 includes high risk individuals.

Officials with the health department continue to call those on the waiting list to set up a time for residents to get a vaccine for next week.

The department will continue to work through a lengthy waitlist but those in the next tier can now sign up.

Boone County positivity rate drops; ninth straight day of double-digit increases

Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services is reporting 82 new COVID-19 cases.

The dashboard is currently reporting 445 active cases, a 24 case increase from Thursday.

The county continues to trend down as there have now been nine straight days of only double-digit case increases. The last time this occurred was Oct. 26.

The county now has a reported total number of COVID-19 cases of 16,900.

The county has reported the total number of cases removed from isolation is 16,384, an increase of 58 from Wednesday.

Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services dashboard has reported the latest five-day average as 56, an increase of 14 from Thursday.

The dashboard is reporting the positivity rate of 25.6% positivity rate for Jan. 22 through Jan. 28. For the week of Jan. 29 through Thursday has a positivity rate of 20.

The health department is reporting the total number of hospitalizations in Boone County is 64.

The number of Boone County residents hospitalized is reported to be 17.

The dashboard is reporting 23 COVID-19 patients in the ICU and 14 patients on ventilators.

The hospital status has moved back into the 'yellow' zone. 'Yellow status' says hospitals are operating within the standard capacity and meeting any of the following criteria:

• Delaying non-emergency patient transfers from referring hospitals due to capacity for greater than two (2) days, or
• Delaying non-emergency patient transfers from referring hospitals due to staffing for greater than two (2) consecutive days, or
• Delaying non-urgent procedures and operations to provide additional inpatient capacity
• According to the Missouri Vaccine Dashboard, Boone County has the largest number of people vaccinated against the coronavirus with 7,110 having received their second dose. Boone County residents with a second dose make-up more than half of all Mid-Missouri that have a second dose.

The dashboard also reports that 19,530 have received their first dose.

The county reports 10.8% of the population have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Boone Hospital Center to allow visitors

On Monday, Boone Hospital Center will allow patients to have visitors. Until then, the hospital's no-visitor policy is still in place -- it was instituted in November.

Hospital officials said in a release that a drop in the 14-day positivity rate made the change possible.

The release said patients who haven't tested positive for COVID-19, will be allowed to have one visitor per day. Officials stipulated that all visitors be older than 16, complete a COVID-19 screening and wear a mask at all times while inside the facility.

Some patients, like those receiving end of life care, or those in the obstetric and neonatal intensive care units, may have two visitors.

The hospital is not permitting patients who have tested positive to have any visitors.

Positivity rate falls; Missouri administers 600,000 vaccine doses

The state health department said Missouri positivity has fallen once again. Health officials included more than 600,000 vaccine doses have been administered.

The health department's coronavirus dashboard said the seven-day COVID-19 positivity rate was down to 8.8% on Friday. It's a decrease of half a percentage point from the day before. The last time the rate was at the same level was on Oct. 5, 2020.

Department data says the rate has been on the decline for a month after seeing an increase in late December.

Missouri's coronavirus vaccine dashboard said 632,213 doses of vaccine have been administered so far. It's an increase of 47,953 vaccinations over the last day.

The dashboard included that 488,599 residents have received the first dose of vaccine and 143,614 have received two doses. Officials say 8% of the state's population has been vaccinated.

The health department included 1,325 more state residents have tested positive for COVID-19. It brings the pandemic total up to 464,444.

Health officials included that 13 more deaths were added to the dashboard -- 7,130 have died from coronavirus since the pandemic started.

Dashboard data included Missouri ranked 21st in the nation for virus-related deaths in the last week -- 41. It said the state was also 27th in the US for new cases over the same period -- 7,069.