St. Louis County drops mask mandate with COVID cases waning
By JIM SALTER
Associated Press
Hospitalizations from COVID-19 are dropping, new cases are declining and Missouri’s largest county is ending its mask mandate as the omicron variant fades out. Democratic St. Louis County Executive Sam Page announced Wednesday that the mask mandate will end at 8 a.m. Monday in the county of 1 million residents. In January, at the peak of the latest COVID-19 surge fueled by the omicron variant, Missouri was getting an average of nearly 12,000 new daily cases and had about 3,700 people hospitalized with COVID-19 per day. The average has dropped below 800 new daily cases and to 1,638 hospitalizations. In St. Louis County, the daily number of new cases dropped from 2,700 in early January to 130 as of Wednesday.