Governor Mike Parson will spend another $30 million in state funds on contracting additional staff for hospital capacity and antibody infusion centers.
“Fifteen million dollars will go towards establishing antibody infusion centers. Antibody infusions are proven to decrease serious illness from Covid-19 and we have seen tremendous success with our site in Springfield,” Parson said Wednesday.
This will happen at five to eight sites across the state.
Acting State Health Director Robert Knodell says they are contracting with other companies, along with Vizient staffing, to help these hospitals.
“The state is talking with contractors across the country that do have traveling medical professionals that do move around the country in surge situations or where there is a severe event, whether it has to do with an infectious disease or hurricanes or other extreme events, that they come in and provide surge staffing. SO we have been assured that those individuals will be available,” Knodell said in a press conference Wednesday at the state capitol.
Parson also said that the newly-created state ambulance strike teams will begin going to other parts of the state, now that the COVID-19 hospitalization numbers are improving in the Springfield area.
Parson says the Covid-19 delta variant will be in Missouri for a while and that it should be up to local schools and parents to decide how to protect their unvaccinated children.
“I think the parents have to have a real say in what happens to their kids when they go into a schoolroom,” Parson told reporters. ” I think that at some point the people who have had the vaccine, that have had Covid and been tested for antibodies and got in their system, there needs to be a division between those people and the people that are unvaccinated.
“The local districts are going to have to decide what to do, and we see that there schools across the state — some are not mandating masks, some are — and I think you are going to see that develop. Again, it goes back to the parents,” he added.
