Avoid personal interactions. If you can work from home, do so.
If your business and you can take care of your customers with curbside, do so.
Wear a mask everywhere.
Create a 10-person bubble but still wear a mask. That will help w contact tracing.
A @DeSmetJesuitHS student held a Halloween party with about 200 students. 5 students have since tested positive. Others with symptoms are awaiting test results.
@DrSamPage called it a super spreader event. Asking all students who attended the party to quarantine immediately.
County had 673 new cases on 11/5.
"If this rate continues & I’m standing here a week from today, we will have 4,300 new cases. That means, statistically, 100 more people in county will die. We are not doing everything we can to stop the spread of COVID-19." @DrSamPage
"The virus is hitting us harder now more than ever.
More people are sick. More people are going to the hospital.
And hospitals are at or near their capacity in our region — not just COVID patients, all patients." — @alexgarzaMD
"So, when you see someone not wearing a mask in public, not social distancing, or inviting groups for an informal gathering, you're seeing someone who is unwilling to do proven things to help us get the virus back under control and to get back to normal." @alexgarzaMD
There isn't a "robust trend” downward in hospital numbers, said @DrSamPage today. Yet, St. Louis County & @STLCityGov set date to lift public health restrictions for May 18. One doctor said date doesn't matter as much as region's commitment to precautions. stlamerican.com/city-county-to…
Page & @LydaKrewson rely on hospital data in making decisions about public health restrictions because this data shows the amount of transmission in the community. On 5/4, both said they weren't ready to set a specific date. On 5/5, they set May 18. What happened?
“People like to have some sort of clarity of what’s going to happen. There was some pressure on the elected officials. You can only go so far w not setting down a specific date. That’s human nature.” -Dr. Alex Garza, incident commander of STL Pandemic Task Force, who advise them.
In October, Dr. Alex Garza, who is the now face of the STL region's medical #COVID19 response, wrote an article about how pandemics have a similar impact as gun violence. "They affect the poor and vulnerable disproportionately."
St. Louis County Executive Sam Page provided @StLouisAmerican with some preliminary data that confirms what Garza is seeing in the hospitals. According to calculations on rate per 100,000, African Americans are being infected at a rate 4 times higher than white county residents.
“That’s why we made the decisions we made before we had the data to prove it. My administration looks at every complex policy through a lens of equity & applies it aggressively and directs resources to where they are needed,” @DrSamPage.