State health department points to expanded testing as the cause of daily spike in cases

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

The director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services blamed the above-average spike in daily cases on Friday to expanded testing in the state.

273 positive cases were reported Friday, which is the highest daily COVID-19 case increase since April 23. Daily increases had averaged about 141 cases over the past week, Friday's was nearly double that average.

The department said Friday that 167 workers at a St. Joseph meat processing plant who were not showing symptoms tested positive for COVID-19. A total of 295 workers at the plant have tested positive so far.

He said an important distinction is that many of those cases are asymptomatic, as they are testing every employee as a part of their "boxing in" strategy.

"If you compare those to test from 3 weeks ago which were mainly people who were symptomatic, it's really comparing apples and oranges," Dr. Randall Williams said. 

The state is also doing "community snapshot testing" to see how the virus has spread across the state.

Dr. Williams said they tested 400 people randomly in Phelps County, all of which came back negative. He said seven more areas were tested, so more asymptomatic cases could raise the daily total of cases when the results come back tomorrow.

"The best advice I could give is the governors: don't look at single days, look at trend lines," Dr. Williams said.