MU Health Care releases new visitor hours, guidelines amid decline in COVID-19 cases

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

MU Health Care announced Friday plans to relax visitor restrictions and visiting hours because of declining COVID-19 cases.

At the start of the year, the health care system, adult and pediatric patients at University Hospital, Women's Hospital, and Missouri Orthopaedic Institute were only allowed one visitor and no one could visit COVID patients. The facilities will now allow two visitors starting Monday and Missouri Psychiatric Center will also allow two visitors for both adult and pediatric patients. All visitors must be 16, Missouri Psychiatric Center visitors must be at least 18 years old.

However, masks are still required. Two visitors will be appointed for adult patients diagnosed with COVID-19 but they will need to stay masked and can only leave the room to exit the facility.

Visiting hours will be each day from 8 a.m until 9 p.m. at all buildings except for Missouri Psychiatric Center, where hours will be from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m daily. Parents of any child patients can visit at any time.

Emergency Room Department patients, patients undergoing same-day surgery and testing and those attending clinic visits will also be permitted two visitors. 

Other Mid-Missouri health care centers such as Boone Health and Capital Region Medical Center also made changes to their policies. Boone Health says they also started permitting two visitors for their patients and will allow sibling visitation starting March.21.

"Next week we going to start allowing sibling visitation on labor and delivery and post postpartum, because you know big brother and big sister need to come in and see that new baby," said Dr. Robin Blount, chief medical officer at Boone Health.

Dr. Blount says they continue to monitor data and a rise in cases can force restrictions in the counties they overlook.

"We're below five percent of positivity and we're at point seven per thousand on the prevalence. If those should go back up, we would trigger having to restrict visitors again and make changes again," said Blount.

Hospitals are relaxing their restrictions as coronavirus cases and hospitalizations continue to decline on the backside of the omicron wave. Boone County's five-day average of new daily cases has fallen nearly tenfold since mid-January, into the single digits. Boone County's hospitals were treating just 25 patients as of Thursday, with only one in intensive care.

Blount said over recent weeks they saw a dramatic decrease in the number of patients with COVID at their hospital. She said they currently only have four in-patients that are COVID positive.

Blount said they have been in the single digits of patients with COVID for about 2 weeks now, however, they are monitoring a new variant.

"This is not a static situation, There's a new Omicron variant BA.2 that is starting to show up in the US and is starting to cause some problems in Europe. We're hoping that it won't cause a dramatic increase in hospitalization but we have to keep an eye on those things," said Blount.

Statewide hospitalizations for COVID-19 have fallen from nearly 4,000 at omicron's peak in late January to about 700.

SSM St. Mary's Hospital announced changes with their COVID restrictions the second week of March.