UPDATE: Cole County health director: High COVID-19 positivity rate from testing symptomatic people
Data show increasing numbers of COVID-19-positive cases in Moniteau County, but Moniteau is not alone.
Missouri has seen record numbers of people receiving positive tests for the coronavirus.
As numbers quickly climbed this weekend, Moniteau County health officials became anxious, according to Darrell Hendrickson, the county health department environmentalist.
"We seem to have an uptick," he said. "We had quite a few over the weekend. We're up to about 120 active cases going on right now."
One concern is there is no common theme, or "super-spreader" event, Hendrickson said. It's just the spread of the virus into the county - into rural communities, he said.
Moniteau County had the sixth-highest positivity rate among Missouri counties for the week ending Friday, at 53.1 percent, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. In Central Missouri, only Osage County (ranked fourth at 57.1 percent positivity) ranked higher.
Miller County (ranked 11th at 46.1 percent) and Cole County (ranked 17th at 41.3 percent) followed.
The positivity rate is the percentage of all coronavirus tests performed that come out positive for the county.
Public health officials often use the rate to help determine how much transmission of the virus there is in a county, according to the website for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of public Health. The school has published a report to help explain what the positivity rate does.
High percentages often come about because a community doesn't do much testing and mostly symptomatic patients receive the tests, according to the Johns Hopkins report. Or a high rate may be an accurate indication of how widespread the virus is within a community.
"A high percent positive means that more testing should probably be done - and it suggests that it is not a good time to relax restrictions aimed at reducing coronavirus transmission," the report states. "Because a high percentage of positive tests suggests high coronavirus infection rates (due to high transmission in the community), a high percent positive can indicate it may be a good time to add restrictions to slow the spread of disease."
The World Health Organization recommended in May that governments not reopen until an area's percent positive remained below 5 percent positive for two weeks, according to the Johns Hopkins report.
The report states there are essentially two ways to reduce a positivity rate - reduce the amount of coronavirus transmission or increase the number of people who get tested.
The steps "go hand-in-hand," the report says. Places that do more testing help assure people who might become contagious are isolated, which reduces transmission.
"When there is not enough testing in an area, people who are infected with coronavirus don't get counted, and they don't know to isolate themselves. As a result, these people can spread the coronavirus and cause disease in their communities," the Johns Hopkins report says.
"Anybody who has symptoms - we're really encouraging those individuals to get tested," Hendrickson said. "That may have an effect on the rate."
In Cole County, there was another jump in the number of positive cases late last week, according to information on the Cole County Health Department website.
Cole County reported 56 new positive cases Wednesday, 64 on Thursday and 62 on Friday.
Over the week, Cole County had the sixth-highest number of new cases among Missouri counties - 334, according to DHSS.
Boone County was seventh-highest with 315 new cases. St. Louis City followed with 307 new infections.
Cole County's rate of new infection was 435 per 100,000 population. The county population is 76,745.
Only Moniteau County, with 76 new cases (and a rate of 471.1 per 100,000) and Barton County (56 cases at 476.4 per 100,000) had higher rates.
"We're going to continue increasing our efforts to try to encourage individuals to social distance, wear the mask, use proper hand-washing and those kinds of activities," Hendrickson said. "We're going to try to bend this thing back."
Representatives of the Cole and Osage county health departments and Miller County Health Center could not be reached for comment Monday.