ST. LOUIS — St. Louis health leaders say their seven-day COVID case average has tripled in December, up to more than 150 cases per day.
Preliminary data from the past few days shows the positivity rate could be as high as 25%, five times higher than the goal: below 5%.
“These trends are alarming, especially when we know the actual numbers may be higher, as many people have the disease asymptomatically and others are not getting tested,” Dr. Mati Hlatshwayo Davis, Director of Health for the City of St. Louis, said in a press release.
St. Louis County is seeing a similar spike. The county's dashboard reported 1,539 new cases Wednesday, the highest of the pandemic, and a single-day positivity rate of 25.7%.
"COVID-19 is spreading unchecked in St. Louis County," a release from the county said Wednesday. "The positivity rate continues to rise rapidly, suggesting that the rate of transmission is increasing, and many infections are going undetected."
St. Louis Hills Pharmacy staff said they're dealing with higher customer volumes, even though many patients aren't making it through the front door.
"We do all of our testing from the car because we don't want someone who may have COVID to come in," pharmacist Josh Bangert said. "We are doing a lot of the vaccinations. We just want to keep everybody safe."
Instructions on the front door instruct COVID testing patients to wait in their vehicles. Staff is making about thirty to forty visits to parked cars each day, though they're getting many more inquiries about availability as the demand for tests spikes.
"Incredibly busy, a huge uptick in demand, people calling all day long, looking for tests, whether it be us testing them or at-home tests," Bangert said.
Local health leaders said it's important that would be test-takers avoid the ERs if all you need is a swab because emergency rooms are swamped by the omicron variant, which is thought to be less lethal but spreads incredibly easily.
"If Omicron is a smaller percentage but it's a larger group of people, then it's almost a wash, right," said Dr. Alex Garza, Incident Commander for the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task Force. "We don't take any comfort in that as healthcare systems. We're still going to get crushed by a number of patients."
Garza said they are seeing a familiar trend: rising positivity rates lead to more hospitalizations and admissions.
Taskforce hospital systems surpassed 700 in-patients Wednesday, the highest that number has been since January. Garza said emergency rooms are already "overwhelmed," and they expect the crowd counts to climb higher.
Two task force hospital systems, BJC and SSM, announced changes to their visitor policies in an attempt to keep patients and staff safe.