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9,341 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Missouri
418 deaths
On the podium today with the governor: Vice President Christine Smith, Pfizer BioTherapeutics Pharmaceutical Sciences. She announced the Pfizer Chesterfield plant’s critical role in helping develop a possible COVID-19 vaccine.
Gov. Parson has been on a business and health care facility tour in regions of the state and today revealed that he has not been tested for COVID-19 since he says he feels healthy.
WATCH ENTIRE BRIEFING:
Today’s COVID-19 cases, as reported by Missouri DHSS at 2:00 p.m. on May 6, 2020. These numbers are subject to change throughout the day.
Deaths in Missouri: At least 396
Positive cases in Missouri: at least 9,102
Click here for an interactive map.
Cases in Missouri: 8,754
Deaths: 358
Governor Mike Parson held today’s briefing after returning from a business tour of southwest Missouri’s Joplin and Springfield. He praised the safety measures he observed and responded to why he chose not to wear a mask in some cases. He says wearing a mask is a personal choice, not one for a governor to decide.
Treasure Scott Fitzgerald announced that most of the CARES Act funding for local governments is being delivered this week, with a handful of counties that have not filled out the necessary paperwork to get their share of $521 million.
State Department of Health and Senior Services Director Randall Williams explained statewide testing trends and test results from employees of Triumph Foods in Buchanan County.
Watch entire briefing:
As of this weekend, 359 employees and contract workers of Triumph Foods tested positive for COVID-19 with no related symptoms. Testing results continue to come in and contact tracing is continued. Wednesday and Thursdays’ results bring the total tested to more than 2,300. According to company information online, there are 2800 employees at this location.
The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) partnered with the City of St. Joseph Health Department, Northwest Health Services and Mosaic Life Care in testing staff and employees at the massive meatpacking plant.
Last week, the state health department director, Dr. Randall Williams said he was expecting to see more positive cases, bu that he has no plans to shut down the plant.
“But at this point, we will do what we do in public health, which is epidemiologically {sic}, contact tracing, isolating, quarantining, and identifying those. Again, we cannot thank them enough, we think that what they do is incredibly important so all of us are able to go to the grocery store and get food,” Willams said.
We expect another update today at 3 p.m. at Gov. Mike Parson’s COVID-19 public briefing.
Cases in Missouri: 7,562
Total Deaths: 329
Patients tested in Missouri (by all labs): approximately 82,152
Today’s briefing centered on housing assistance and resources for Missourians amid the COVID-19 crisis. Under the CARES Act, Missouri will receive funding for additional resources to help meet emerging needs, including the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program and the Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) program. State Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven, State Commissioner of Higher Education Zora Mulligan and State Director of the Department of Commerce and Insurance Chlora Lindley-Myers gave updates. Director of DHSS, Dr. Randall Williams gave the most recent COVID-19 testing results for the Triumph Foods pork packing plant in St. Joseph.
A bipartisan team of lawmakers, agency chiefs, and other advisors is helping Gov. Mike Parson to stay on top of massive amounts of federal money coming into Missouri for coping with COVID-19.
The working group appointed by the governor made its first major move Tuesday to clear $500 million in CARES Act funding to be spread out among counties and St. Louis City. View the allocations by county.
State Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick chairs the group and says he has been preparing the counties to get this money.
“This is a lot of money. We’re going to get $521 million that for some counties represents a substantial portion of their operating budget for an entire year. The expectation I have tried to set in the conversations I have had, that they administer grants to other local government entities, whether it be their health departments, ambulance district or hospital district that has costs that have not been reimbursed from another source,” Fitzpatrick explained.
The checks could get to the counties about a week from today if the governor approves the spending.
Tuesday’s first meeting of the group also dealt with applying federal guidelines and a very general overview of state spending on coronavirus response — from public safety to testing. The CARES federal funding must be applied to direct costs from dealing with COVID-19 after March 1, 2020 and prior to December 30, 2020.
Though the $6.2 billion state supplemental budget serves as a guide for those allocations, members agree the challenge is discerning which agencies and businesses need the help and are not “double-dipping” with other aid coming directly from non-CARES Act aid.
“Things are changing pretty quickly,” said State Budget Director Dan Haug. He says he learned today that DESE is getting a separate $117 million for meals to schools.
“Things are still rolling in as we speak. We want to take a global look at this so that if they are getting $117 for meals then maybe we don’t need to provide money for meals and we can use that money more effectively somewhere else,” Haug said.
Haug says his division will provide the group with an accounting of all of the money coming into Missouri outside of the state budget, for instance, the recent relief to hospitals that came directly from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
A suspect was arrested Monday in connection to the arson of the Islamic Center in Cape Girardeau.
Photo courtesy of KFVS in Cape Girardeau
The Cape Girardeau Police Department says 42-year-old Nicholas J Proffitt from Cape Girardeau was arrested without incident and is held at the department, under a no-bond warrant for felony burglary in the first degree, felony arson in the first degree and felony property damage in the first degree. Investigators said in a press release, “the defendant was knowingly motivated to do so by reason of a motive related to the religion of the people who worship at the Islamic Center.”
The attack to the property happened on the first night of Ramadan, a holy month in the Islamic faith.
Police made the arrest after publishing a security photo of a suspect and the FBI offered a reward for information in the case.
The Cape Girardeau Police Department worked with FBI, the ATF, the Missouri State Fire Marshal Office, and the Perryville Police Department.
Coronavirus cases in Missouri: 7,171
Deaths: 288
Missouri’s businesses, churches, and other public gathering places can open starting on May 4, 2020, with some restrictions. Towns and counties that have stricter orders will be allowed to do what they need, Parson says.
Governor Mike Parson explained the first steps of his “Show Me Strong Recovery” plan today which is based closely on Trump Administration guidelines for easing back into business. This phase one plan lasts until May 31.
Read the plan’s business, community guidelines.
Read the Missouri DHSS safety orders effective today.
He says “this is the turning of a dial, not the flip of a switch” and that a gradual reopening will lead to broader economic recovery.
View briefing:
Missouri’s Senator Roy Blunt says Missouri hospitals will get their part of another $50 billion set aside from CARES Act funding this week. This week’s funding is based on past billing experience.
“We’re trying to make this easy, not hard, and do what we can to get hospitals in the place where they are stabilized again. Some money will then go to the surge hospital areas, about $10 billion dollars, and another $10 billion will go to rural hospitals. We are particularly concerned about those rural hospitals in Missouri,” Blunt told Missourinet today.
Blunt says the remaining $20 to be distributed nationally should “true up the real picture” of what hospital incomes were in 2018 and see what can be replaced because of demands of the coronavirus response.
“Because they were asked to stand ready to deal with a pandemic didn’t have the income that they would have had, though we were still asking those hospitals to keep their staff to be ready to deal with the next thing,” Blunt said.”
The first $30 billion was delivered last week and was based on 2019 Medicare billing. Missouri health care providers and hospitals got $618 million of that.
Blunt is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.
State Auditor Nicole Galloway has the job of overseeing the billions of federal dollars coming into the state to be spent quickly on various programs to ease the COVID-19 health and economic crisis.
“The [Parson] administration is going to have a lot of discretion and decision-making authority over this money and so citizens deserve to know how this money is coming in, where it is going and how it is benefitting them and their communities.”
The Auditor’s office is creating an online tool for Missourians to track CARES Act money. She says it’s similar to the way Auditor Tom Schweich monitored the incoming 2009 federal stimulus money in the Great Recession.
Galloway is just as concerned about the state’s reserve funds. “We will recover from this and as we recover we need to truly manage our state’s finances in a conservative way,” she says.
State Auditor Nicole Galloway
In October of last year, Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway warned that the state’s “rainy day fund” is not ready for a recession or disaster.
A complete copy of the report is online here.
Today, in the midst of a coronavirus-caused economic downturn, her predictions are playing out.
“I have been consistently advocating for the state to be in a better financial position and that includes the state reserves,” she tells Missourinet. She says that after a deep dive in the state’s finances, their work “revealed the difficult realities of Missouri’s budget due to years of policy decisions based on unrealistic expectations by lawmakers.”
“We knew that because we are not prepared, the state is going to have to significantly cut expenditures and services, investment in things like education and infrastructure — and that’s exactly what we’re seeing,” she says.
The fund is most often used to sustain the state’s daily operations cash flow, for example paying off tax refunds. The Parson administration borrowed $500 million in 2019, according to audits. In 2018, Moody’s Analytics ranked the state near the bottom in its economic preparedness stress test.
It would take a governor’s recommendation and then two-thirds of both the House and Senate to access the reserve funds. According to the Missouri Office of Administration, the funds would be paid back over three years starting the next fiscal year.
