FRIDAY UPDATES: City of Columbia to host community briefing on COVID-19 Monday afternoon
The city of Columbia will host a community briefing Monday at 3 p.m. to to give an update on the current state of COVID-19 cases and the future of the Health Orders in Columbia and Boone County.
City leaders of Columbia and Boone County will be speaking.
The briefing will be live-streamed for everyone on the city's website and will begin five minutes before 3 p.m. and broadcast live on Spectrum 992, Mediacom 80 and CenturyLink 96.
Boone County now first in state with percent of residents completing necessary coronavirus vaccine doses
The Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services is reporting 15 new COVID-19 cases.
There are currently 86 active cases in the county, a drop of four cases from Thursday.
The county now has a reported total number of COVID-19 cases of 18,301.
The county has reported the total number of cases removed from isolation is 18,129, an increase of 19 cases from Thursday.
The county continues to trend down as there have been 92 straight days of single or double-digit case increases.
The health department is reporting one Boone County resident is in the hospital due to the coronavirus.
The State of Missouri coronavirus vaccine dashboard is reporting that 79,039 residents have received their first dose in Boone County and 60,175 Boone County residents have completed their vaccine doses.
Boone County has the largest percentage of people in Mid-Missouri that have received at least one dose of the vaccine with 43.8%. The second closest in the state is St. Louis County with 40%.
Boone County is now first in the state with a reported 33.3% of residents that have completed their coronavirus vaccine doses. Atchison County is second in the state with 33.2% of residents have completed the doses for vaccination.
State of Missouri offering more community COVID-19 testing options
The state of Missouri continues to host test sites for COVID-19 across the state and in Mid-Missouri.
Officials say that testing continues to be an effective tool in the fight against the coronavirus.
Now that there are FDA authorized at-home tests, those who need to be tested for COVID-19 and can’t get tested by a healthcare provider can consider using either a self-collection kit or a self-test that can be performed anywhere.
The State continues to offer community testing events in areas throughout the state in a regular weekly cadence. A new regular event in Branson has been added to the schedule.
Events are currently available at American Legion #1423 off Tanner Bridge road in Jefferson City on May 9 and 23 and June 13 and 17 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
No pre-registration or appointment is needed, and patients do not need to be Missouri residents to be tested.
Missouri's share of positive coronavirus tests increase as cases again top 500
The percentage of coronavirus tests that yield a positive result has increased statewide.
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services reported Friday a positivity rate of 4.9% over the past seven days. That's up from 4.7% reported on Thursday.
Missouri reported 533 new confirmed cases through PCR testing on Friday and 274 probable cases through antigen testing. The state is No. 26 for the number of new cases per 100,000 people over the past week. Missouri has now recorded 501,639 confirmed cases since the pandemic started.
The state reported three more deaths for a total of 8,741.
The percentage of Missouri residents receiving at least one shot of coronavirus vaccine barely budged Friday, remaining a little above 37% of the state population. The number of vaccine doses given out daily continues to drop from its early-April highs and supply continues to outpace demand with millions of Missourians still unvaccinated.
