On Tuesday, the Freeman Health System in Joplin announced it was closing its medical COVID-19 unit after the last four patients were discharged on Monday. Freeman has seen significant patient volumes decrease to a level that we can serve patients in one combined medical unit. The marked slowdown in new cases has enabled the staff to use these hospital beds for other patients.

Currently, Freeman has no patients in the medical COVID-19 unit and just three patients in the COVID-19 intensive care unit. While the Freeman hospital in Neosho is caring for only one coronavirus patient. If you visit any Freeman facility, you are still required to wear a mask and your temperature taken in effort to continue to monitor the situation. According to data from the Joplin Health Department on Tuesday, there have been just 33 news in the past week. The crawl of new Covid cases has allowed the hospital to pivot to inoculating residents with a Covid-19 vaccine. You can pre-register for a vaccine at Freeman dot com forward slash Covid 19.