Greene County had 210 cases of COVID-19 confirmed Friday, marking the first time the county has topped 200 cases in one day. It was the third straight day of record cases, with 142 on Thursday, and 109 on Wednesday.
The county currently has a cumulative total of 3,149 laboratory confirmed cases, 1,554 of them considered active cases.
The county has seen a 34% increase in active cases in the last seven days, and a 26% increase in reported cases.
As of Friday, 85 cases were in Springfield area hospitals with 12 in intensive care. SGCHD officials say that 57% of new cases are individuals between 18 and 22 years old.
“It does appear that most are related to that 18-22 year old age cohort,” Springfield-Greene County Health Director Clay Goddard told OI Saturday. “That suggests that they are college students but the cases were mostly reported out late last night. As you can imagine, it takes some time for staff to wrap their arms around it.”
Missouri State University has reported 267 cases among students and staff during the last week. Any student who is saying in Greene County during their time at MSU counts as a Greene County case, regardless if they contracted the disease elsewhere.
Drury University has reported a total of 23 students and 2 faculty that have tested positive for COVID-19. Evangel University is reporting 15 active cases, and 24 recoveries from the disease. As with MSU, residential students who test positive add to Greene County’s totals.
The spike in cases has led critics of the City of Springfield’s masking ordinance to say the increased cases prove masks have no effect. Goddard told OI that masking is only effective if people are consistently using them, and that other behaviors such as ignoring social distancing is contributing to disease spread.
“Masking works in environments where they are used,” Goddard said. “I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, masking is not the silver bullet. It has to be used with the other tools to be effective. Much of this is driven by human behaviors unrelated to mask wearing.”
Springfield City Council member Richard Ollis agreed with Goddard that masks are not the lone solution to stopping COVID-19, but a valuable tool.
“We still believe that masking is one tool that can be deployed to help in our battle with COVID,” Ollis told OI Saturday. “Although we have seen a spike in cases, many factors contribute to this including over 50,000 students going back to school and many of the cases coming from outside our city limits where masking is not required. It’s not a “silver bullet” but if we can continue using masking, physical distancing, hand washing, and other disease control methods we’ll be able to keep the economy open and mitigate the impact of this pandemic on our citizens, especially the most venerable.”
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