TUESDAY UPDATES: Cole County Commissioners add two contact tracers, COVID-19 cases increase
UPDATE 6:04 P.M.: The Cole County Commission added two part-time contact tracers at the county health department as COVID-19 cases continue to increase.
Positive cases in the county increased by seven to 248 on Tuesday, according to the county's COVID-19 website.
It included active cases increased to 42 and recovered cases aslo increased to 204.
Presiding County Commissioner Sam Bushman said in an email two registered nurses will be brought on at the health department.
Cole County Health Department spokeswoman Chezney Schulte said there are six full-time contact tracers at the health department.
Schulte said health department director Kristi Campbell requested the additional staff members as school starts back up.
"As we get into the 'busy season' of back-to-school immunizations and influenza, it is important that we have extra staff available if needed in order to continue to provide necessary services to the community," Schulte said.
The spokeswoman included the health department has been able to keep up with the COVID-19 case load so far.
UPDATE 4:35 P.M.: Boone County added its largest COVID-19 case increase in more than two weeks.
The Columbia/Boone County health department said in a tweet on Tuesday positive coronavirus cases reached 1,090, an addition of 30 over the past 24 hours.
Active COVID-19 cases increased by 10 to 176 from Monday.
A tweet from the health department said recovered coronavirus patients went up by 19 to 911. Three others have also died from COVID-19.
Health officials said in a separate tweet a positive case recorded on Sunday was reassigned to another county.
Tuesday's case increase was the largest reported since July 11, when the county set a record for daily increases at 53.
According to the tweet, four Boone County residents were hospitalized with coronavirus on Tuesday.
The most recent COVID-19 testing data from the health department's coronavirus website said 82 people were tested for the virus on Monday. It was the lowest amount of daily tests since the first week of July.
In all, the health department has tested 46,286 people since the pandemic started.
The website included Boone County's five-day average increased to 22.6% up from 21.6% on Monday.
ORIGINAL: Missouri broke another COVID-19 record Tuesday after setting and breaking daily increase records multiple times last week.
The state health department said COVID-19 cases were up to 44,823, an increase of 1,773 over the last 24 hours. Monday's surge in cases broke the previous record by more than 100.
COVID-19 deaths topped out at 1,213, 12 higher than the day before.
Missouri's seven-day coronavirus positivity rate was 8.6%, health officials said. According to a health department tweet from last week, the positivity rate on July 21 was 5.7%.
The health department's COVID-19 dashboard included Randolph County in the list of counties with the highest percent increases in cases over the last week. It said positive cases have increased 68% from last week, going from 28 to 47 in seven days.
As of Tuesday, 652,924 Missourians have been tested for novel coronavirus. State data said the percentage of all positive tests was 6.5%.
