Governor extends Missouri's COVID-19 recovery timeline

Gov. Mike Parson announced Thursday that Phase 1 of Missouri’s COVID-19 recovery plan will be extended through June 15.

Phase 1 was scheduled to end May 31.

Parson said during a press conference the extension is not meant to represent a step back, but rather to offer more time for communities to prepare for the second phase.

Businesses can continue to operate and events can continue to be held as they have been, as long as health and safety precautions are taken, along with social distancing standards, Parson said.

“Some communities are further along than others when it comes to reopening and economic recovery,” Parson said. “This gives them more time to align with us at the state level as we continue working toward phase 2.”

Phase 1 included:

• Expanding testing capacity and volume in the state

• Expanding reserves of PPE by opening public and private supply chains

• Continue to monitor and, if necessary, expand hospital and health care system capacity, including isolation and alternate care facilities for those that cannot self-quarantine at home

• Improving ability to predict potential outbreaks using Missouri’s public health data

“We are very pleased at how well Phase 1 has gone so far,” Parson said.

The governor was asked Thursday what Phase 2 would look like.

He said it would be more open and that citizens needed to prepare themselves to live without a social distancing order.

“June the 15th, we’ll make another decision,” he said.

Missouri had 12,673 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of 2 p.m. Thursday.

It saw an increase of less than 1% in the last 24 hours of reported data, according to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard. That data reflects a 72-hour delay.

The state had seen just under an 8% increase in cases in the past seven days, which reflects the same delay in reporting.

Butler County is currently reporting 31 cases, with one new case announced Thursday.

The state has seen 707 deaths attributed to COVID-19, including five in Stoddard County. Stoddard County has the eighth highest number of deaths in the state, and the third highest among rural areas outside of the Kansas City and St. Louis regions.

The Stoddard County deaths have been attributed to an outbreak in a nursing home.

The state changed its rules two weeks ago to require nursing home facilities to report positive cases, according to officials. Prior to that, that duty fell to the provider or doctor who received the results of the positive test.

Parson also spoke about measures that will be taken to continue increasing testing capacity, including with additional drive up testing sites.