By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri Governor Mike Parson assures Missourians the amount of testing for the coronavirus will increase, dramatically, very soon.
“I think you’re going to see some dramatic increases in the testing within the next, actually daily, but I would say in the next two weeks we’re probably going to have the capability of testing almost 10,000 per day,” Parson tells reporters after meeting with local officials at Mosaic Life Care in St. Joseph over the noon hour Monday.
Missouri is receiving $9.9 million in federal emergency funding to fight COVID-19. Another approximately $3.4 million is coming from the federal government to buy supplies, such as masks.
Parson late Friday issued an executive order declaring a state of emergency, freeing up $7 million in state funds to help local governments respond to the outbreak which the World Health Organization has labeled a pandemic.
Parson says any state action has one goal in mind.
“The number one issue for me as the governor: make sure the public is safe. That’s the number one issue,” Parson tells reporters. “There are a lot of other questions that come up about what are we doing on the local level, what are we doing statewide? But the initial response is what are we doing for the public safety of this state? That’s my number one priority.”
Parson says he joined a conference call Monday with President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and others in the Trump Administration to discuss how best to react to the growing crisis. Six cases of coronavirus have been diagnosed in Missouri; 170 people have been tested.
State Health Director, Dr. Randall Williams, says Missouri is in a period of transition. He says the state is in its diagnostic stage now and will shift to surveillance at the beginning of April.
Williams says the Missouri medical community is ramping up to treat an expected rise in the number of Missourians suffering from COVID-19.
“We’ve had two calls with all the hospital providers, 300 people on those calls,” Williams says. “We presented to the Senate-House joint committee last Wednesday their preparations in a worst-case scenario. As you know, this disease does have an extreme morbidity for especially elderly people. And so, they presented their data then for the number of ventilators, ECMO, and other facilities and they feel like they’re well prepared.”
Williams says mobile testing labs will soon be established, away from the hospitals.
Parson is discouraging public events which attract more than 50 people. The governor says the food supply is safe and has not been disrupted by the outbreak. Parson has left it up to local officials on whether to hold school or not.