Although the positivity rate for COVID-19 infection and hospitalization in the St. Louis area have been declining, there may be countervailing forces at play, according to the Missouri Hospital Association (MHA).
“If we see a spike in Southeast Missouri that leads to some patients being transferred from there, the argument would be that while the numbers are trending in a positive way in St. Louis that isn't to say that those hospitals are necessarily going to see a significant reduction in their particular hospitalization rates because of it," said David Dillon, MHA spokesperson.
"That's an unknown. It changes day to day.”
As a result, the emergency staff requested by area hospitals from the U.S. Navy that arrived this week to help manage a surge of COVID-19 patients will come in handy, according to Dillon.
“The St. Louis Pandemic Task Force had met with at least part of that group this week,” he said. “There was supposed to be some 40-odd people. Any support is good support. The community hospitals have clearly been slammed in the St Louis area and because they are a destination for many transfers, they have been unable to take patients from elsewhere at least at the normal cadence which might be expected.”
Contributing to the shortage, Dillon added, is the rate at which local healthcare workers have been impacted personally by COVID-19.
“When you've got up to 35% positive in your community, then a certain amount of your workforce is going to be exposed, and whether they're hospitalized or not, which probably a very small percentage would be because of the level of vaccination, but if you're positive, you can't go in and serve with potentially immunocompromised people," he said. "So, what we saw was a lot of caregivers were sidelined.”
The St. Louis COVID-19 dashboard reports 2,775 confirmed cases in the past 14 days and 44,086 cases to date, as of Feb. 2.
"We were at a point probably last week and the week before where some hospitals were even having trouble moving people who, presented for whatever type of care, whether that was for COVID care, a heart attack, stroke, or some other type of illness, from the emergency department up into an inpatient bed even within their own hospital," Dillon told the St. Louis Record. "It was basically an inpatient bed capacity challenge that was largely due to being able to staff the beds that hospitals have."