JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Missouri has conducted more than a million PCR tests since mid-March after the COVID-19 pandemic reached the state.
According to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, the state has recorded 88,610 cases of COVID-19, an increase of 1,397 positive cases from the day before, and 1,545 total deaths as of Thursday, September 3. That’s a case-fatality rate of 1.74 percent.
Please keep in mind that not all cases and deaths recorded since yesterday occurred in the last 24 hours.
For comparative purposes, Missouri’s COVID case-fatality rate was 4.71 percent at the end of June and in mid-May, the case-fatality rate was 5.5 percent. When COVID-19 was beginning to spread across the state in late March, the case-fatality rate was 1.33 percent.
But how do COVID deaths compare to other illnesses, like the flu or even the H1N1 pandemics of 1918 and 2009? It’s a common question.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), preliminary data for the 2018-2019 flu season in the U.S. shows an estimated 35,520,883 cases and 34,157 deaths; that would mean a case-fatality rate of 0.09 percent.
The 1918 H1N1 epidemic, commonly referred to as the “Spanish Flu,” is estimated to have infected 29.4 million Americans and claimed 675,000 lives as a result; a case-fatality rate of 2.3 percent. The Spanish Flu claimed greater numbers of young people than typically expected from other influenzas.
Beginning in January 2009, another H1N1 virus, known as the “swine flu,” spread around the globe and was first detected in the US in April of that year. The CDC identified an estimated 60.8 million cases and 12,469 deaths; a 0.021 percent case-fatality rate.
The 7-day rolling average for cases in Missouri sits at 1,291. Yesterday, the average was at 1,307 cases.
Just over 50 percent of all reported cases are for individuals 39 years of age and younger. The 20 to 24 age group has 11,136 recorded cases, the highest of all age groups. The 0 to 9 age group has 2,158 reported cases and the 10 to 19 group has 9,235 cases.
The average age of a Missouri COVID-19 patient is 42, while the rolling average over the last 7 days is 38 years old.
Just under half of all recorded deaths in the state are for patients 80 years of age and older.
Missouri has administered 1,008,078 PCR tests for COVID-19 and 91.3 percent of those individuals have tested negative. The number of people tested in the last 24 hours is not immediately known.
According to the state health department’s COVID-19 Dashboard, “A PCR test looks for the viral RNA in the nose, throat, or other areas in the respiratory tract to determine if there is an active infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. A positive PCR test means that the person has an active COVID-19 infection.”
Additionally, positive cases are up 8.1 percent (per 100,000 people) over the last 7 days.
The state is reporting 890 hospitalizations for COVID-19 as of August 31. This number is subject to a 72-hour delay to ensure that the data are accurate and complete.
As of September 3, the CDC has identified 6,087,403 cases of COVID-19 and 185,092 deaths across all 50 states and 6 U.S.-affiliated jurisdictions, for a national case-fatality rate of 3.04 percent.