A little more than 200 temporary medical staff ended up being sent to hospitals, while monoclonal antibody treatments averaged more than $5,600 per patient.
Several Democratic legislators from Kansas City and St. Louis have introduced legislation meant to bring more fresh food to urban food deserts through urban farming and offer incentives for grocery stores to locate in food deserts both urban and rural.
Last year, COVID-19 pushed the persistent problem of healthy food access toward crisis levels. The number of meals provided by The St. Louis Area Foodbank, which serves 14 Missouri counties and 12 in Illinois, increased by 53% to nearly 53 million between June 2019 and June 2021, data from the nonprofit show.