Health director: Missouri COVID-19 positive rate going up
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)
Missouri's health director said Wednesday that the state's surge in new COVID-19 cases is an indicator of growing spread, not simply a result of more testing or processing a backlog of tests.
Dr. Randall Williams, director of the Department of Health and Senior Services, said at Gov. Mike Parson's COVID-19 briefing in the Capitol that new cases numbers at 1,000 or more the past two days are "reflecting reality."
The state has been working since last week through a backlog of about 7,000 tests. Those who test positive are notified immediately but the backlog applies to entering the test results into the state's database.
Watch a replay of the briefing in the player below.
Williams said the backlog is a contributing factor, but it would be "misrepresenting" the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic in Missouri to attribute the recent increases primarily to that.
The state set a record Wednesday with 1,301 new COVID-19 cases. That comes after Tuesday's then-record of 1,138 cases.
The Department of Health and Senior Service said in a social media post Wednesday that the state is seeing a dramatic shift in the age of people who have been infected.
"We think this represents community transmission," especially among those in their 20s and 30s, Williams said.
The seven-day rolling average of positive tests has reached about 6 percent after hovering at around 3 percent to 4 percent for much of the pandemic, Williams said.
That surge in cases is coming at a time when a key indicator of the pandemic's severity -- hospitalizations -- is not available to the public. The state stopped posting hospital data on its online dashboard last week after a White House-mandated change in how the numbers are reported.
The numbers were trending upward at the time the data was cut off.
Williams said he expects the data to be available in about a week. He said the number of people hospitalized statewide with COVID-19 has been trending upward and is likely now at about 900. The state lists the high as 984 on May 5.
Parson said he knows hospitalizations will go up with the way the virus is spreading. However, it's still unknown how much toll they'll take on the health care system, he said.
Parson said the hospital system "still has the capacity and is stable" right now.
The governor also pushed counties to begin to use funding from the federal CARES Act stimulus to pay for the fight against coronavirus, including hiring more people to investigate cases.
Elaborating on school comments
Parson also sought to clarify comments he made on a radio station last week about the possibility that some students will contract the virus when schools reopen next month.
The governor attacked people he said were using his poorly communicated comments for political gain.
Parson caught criticism for comments made on a St. Louis radio show saying children will likely contract coronavirus but will "get over it." Parson clarified the statement and said he does care about children.
"For someone to use politics as a tool to say that I don’t give a damn about children is one sick individual," Parson said Wednesday without naming anyone.
Parson said he has spent a lifetime protecting people, that one of his children is a school teacher and that five of his grandchildren are or have been in the public school system.
"What I was trying to say was that there is a very real possibility that there could be COVID in our schools and we want to prepare for that," Parson said.
He emphasized the importance of local decision-making, saying no "one-size-fits-all approach" to reopening schools will work for the entire state.
Parson said he will stop in Columbia on Thursday to speak with local leaders about violent crime ahead of a special legislative session on the topic next week.
