JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Missouri is spending $30 million to support the state’s hospitals and health care professionals in their fight against COVID. The funding will be to help with healthcare staffing and antibody infusion stations.
Missouri will commit $15 million for health care staffing for all Missouri-licensed or CMS-certified critical access, acute care, and long-term care hospitals.
Gov. Parson stressed that hospital capacity is limited across the state due to staffing shortages not a lack of bed capacity.
There will be another $15 million going to monoclonal antibody infusion stations. There will be 5 to 8 of these stations strategically located across the state. They will operate for 30 days. The state estimates the sites will be able to treat up to 2,000 patients across the state.
Gov. Parson says there has been a tremendous success at the station in Springfield, Missouri.
Monoclonal antibodies are proteins that can help your body fight off COVID-19 and reduce the risk of severe disease and hospitalization if administered to high-risk patients soon after diagnosis.
Hospitals across the state are seeing increases in COVID hospitalizations. St. Louis area hospitals say they are on a path to run out of beds for COVID-19 patients in the coming weeks.
On Monday, the task force reported an alarming number of positive COVID admissions; 81 today, 72 on Sunday, and 92 on Saturday. A task force official says hospitals are struggling and warns darker days may be ahead.
Many hospitals in the Kansas City metro say they are near the levels they saw at the height of 2020.
The additional help for the state is expected to be announced less than a week after the state tripled the number of mutual aid ambulances.
Last week, Parson said 30 ambulances and more than 60 trained personnel would arrive in Missouri and four other states. They are transferring long-haul COVID-19 patients to other hospitals in an effort to reduce the number of COVID patients.
The 30 teams include 20 advanced life-support ambulances, five basic life-support ambulances, and five specialty care ambulances. The ambulances strike teams are expected to operate in the area through Sept. 5, 2021.
