Three months ago, Missouri Governor Mike Parson announced the end of the pandemic in the state, shutting down daily updates to the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, making tracking increases in cases difficult. KRPS’s Fred Fletcher-Fierro has more.

Wednesday, March 30, the day that Governor Parson announced that the Missouri Department of Health would move from treating COVID-19 from a pandemic to endemic.

It made it more difficult for the public to track the rise and fall in cases, leaving the Sewershed Surveillance Project as one of the only ways to track the severity of COVID cases in Missouri. The project observes wastewater at 100 treatment plants, including 19 in Southwest Missouri, 7 of which have detected a viral load increase by 40% or more from last week or increased by 25% or more for the previous two weeks.

In contrast, half show no change or insufficient data. The Omicron variants continue to be dominant, with the BA.2 and BA2.12.1 variants the most widely detected. The state is reporting about 7,500 new cases in the past seven days.