Missouri's COVID-19 death toll rises by double digits

All of the Springfield News-Leader's coverage of the coronavirus pandemic is being provided for free to our readers. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing at News-Leader.com/subscribe.

Sunday marked another day of double-digit deaths from the novel coronavirus in Missouri as the state’s official death count rose by 10 to 34.

The state’s count, still catching up to county data, does not include a death from COVID-19 in Cole County, and is likely closer to 46.

Carter County in southeast Missouri reported its first death on Saturday, a 59-year-old male who had underlying health conditions who was diagnosed on March 23 and passed away at a Springfield hospital. The man’s case was not travel-related, the county wrote on Facebook.

The Carter County death was reflected in the data provided by the Department of Health and Senior Services, but not several other deaths.

Director Randall Williams said Saturday that the state’s count was behind because of an issue with reporting, that has since been fixed. He said the count would soon agree with those of other official information sources.

Other recent deaths include a woman in her 80s in St. Louis and a man in his 70s in St. Charles County, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Citing information provided by local health officials, the newspaper reported that the agencies provided no other information.

The deaths bring the total number of victims to six in St. Louis city and seven in St. Charles County. A dashboard of cases in St. Louis County, linked from the county’s COVID-19 information page, showed 13 deaths so far in that county on Sunday.

The Jackson County Health Department reported Friday the third COVID-19 patient death in Eastern Jackson County, a man in his 60s, the Independence Examiner reported.

The department, as it has with the earlier deaths and first coronavirus patients, did not give his hometown. The first two deaths, both women in their 80s, happened last Saturday and March 20.

Kansas City’s Health Department has reported its first deaths Thursday and Friday.

Day-to-day operations in Missouri reflected the changing landscape as the state, under fresh statewide stay-home orders issued Friday by Gov. Mike Parson, continued to adjust to the world’s ever-evolving new normal.

The Columbia Police Department announced it would be reducing the amount of in-person calls it would be responding to to prevent possible exposure to COVID-19. The department broke calls for service into two categories: non-life-threatening, covering such things as traffic complaints, vandalism, auto theft, car accidents, peace disturbances and life-threatening, including domestic violence, missing persons, active assaults, sexual assault, and child abuse or neglect.

Grocery stores around the state over the weekend implemented distancing rules. Major outlets like Target and Walmart are limiting how many customers can be in stores at a time. As of Saturday, no more than five customers for each 1,000 square feet at any given time are allowed in a Walmart at once.

In its daily record of testing results, the state health department recorded an additional 76 positive tests for COVID-19, bringing the total since the first case was discovered on March 7 to 2,367.

There have also been six deaths in Greene County and one each in Boone, Camden, Cass, Henry, Jackson, and Lafayette counties. The county for one death has not been determined.

In addition to a rising death toll, the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread to all areas of the state.

Of the 117 local health jurisdictions that report to the state health department, the contagion is present in 77.

The largest outbreaks of COVID-19 continue to be in the state’s urban areas. St. Louis County as of Sunday had 883 cases, with another 298 in the city of St. Louis. On the western side of the state, Kansas City reported 175 infections and Jackson County outside Kansas City had 139 more.

Boone County, with 76 cases on the state report and 69 cases in the county health department count, has the most infections outside the largest metropolitan areas, followed by Greene County with 62 and Cole County with 30.

MU Health Care’s website Sunday listed three inpatient cases in its hospitals with COVID-19, with an additional 12 inpatient cases awaiting test results. Boone Hospital Center tested five people on Saturday, and has tested 792 patients in total since March 12, Marketing Director Ben Cornelius said in an email sent Sunday, adding that 537 of these tests were done through their mobile drive-through testing site.

Nationally, there were 325,185 confirmed infections in the United States at 2:30 Sunday, with 9,267 deaths attributed to COVID-19. The numbers reported in the U.S. grew by by almost 20,000 in less than 24 hours, with the number of deaths up by almost 1,00 in the same period.

Worldwide, the tracking data on cases confirmed by testing exceeded 1.25 million Sunday afternoon. Deaths worldwide that are blamed on the coronavirus now total 68,148.

Rudi Keller of the Tribune contributed to this report.