By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
COVID-19 cases are back on the rise with a third wave coming a little sooner than health officials anticipated.
Mosaic Life Care Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Davin Turner, says the coronavirus patients Mosaic is seeing display harsher symptoms.
“They are sicker,” Turner tells reporters. “Again the majority, well over 70-80% of all the patients are unvaccinated, that are being admitted to our hospital.”
Turner says the elderly remain vulnerable to the most severe effects of COVID.
“This disease really does hit those 70, 80, 90 year olds very hard, whether you’ve been vaccinated or not.”
Mosaic reports it is treating 28 total coronavirus patients as of Thursday morning; 27 in St. Joseph and one in Maryville.
Mosaic primarily serves a five-county area of northwest Missouri, though it also serves counties in northeast Kansas. Turner says the five-county positivity rate is steadily rising, now up a little over 14%.
Turner says Mosaic has noticed COVID waves before, but they didn’t come this quickly.
“It’s happening a little quicker than we anticipated,” according to Turner. “We were seeing a 16-week cycle. When we had our first wave, it lasted about 16-17 weeks before we saw it dropping off. Then we had that lull of about 16 weeks. It happened again this summer. We’ve only had about a four-week lull and we’re seeing it go back up again.”
Turner says the origin of this third wave of the pandemic is hard to pinpoint.
“I don’t know that we have a good answer, because we can’t pick one specific point to say well, here’s what’s going on,” Turner says. “We’re seeing it pretty much across all our counties that we’re seeing these folks have an increased positivity rate. But we can’t link it to any specific event or events.”
Mosaic Life Care has resurrected the vaccination site in the old Gordman’s store at East Hills Mall in St. Joseph to hold vaccination clinics again. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will be available Wednesday, November 17th, between 7am and 3pm. The Mosaic facility in Maryville will hold a vaccination clinic at the Hughes Fieldhouse on the Northwest Missouri State University campus in Maryville on the 18th from 9am until 1pm. Mosaic is working with the Tri County Health Department on scheduling a vaccination clinic in Albany.
Mosaic has received 600 doses of the Pfizer vaccine for children, ages five to 11, with a vaccination clinic for children scheduled for the Mosaic Life Care Family North Pointe.
Click here for more information on the vaccination clinics.