News

The Southbound Route 65 to westbound Route 60 (James River Freeway) ramp will be  closed starting at 8 Friday night, September 18, and going through as late as 6 a.m. Monday, September 21.

Crews will clean and seal bridge deck and driving surfaces on the Route 60/65 interchange ramp, the Route 60 bridge and the Route 65 bridge.

The work will also close the westbound Route 60 right and center lanes and the northbound Route 65 left and center lanes.

Delays are expected in those areas, and drivers are encourage to find another route, according to MODOT.

The Empty Bowls fundraiser to benefit Ozarks Food Harvest looks a lot different this year.  Usually, people go to a Panera Bread parking lot to purchase bowls.  But, because of the pandemic, the event this month is online.  It’s already underway and goes through September 30th.

Participants can bid on handcrafted wood and ceramic bowls in a virtual silent auction.  The first 250 people to sign up will receive a coupon for a free meal of soup and bread.

The Springfield-Greene County Health Department is notifying the public of potential high-risk community exposures from at least four people who tested positive for COVID-19.

They worked at Showtime Joe’s, 2209 W. Sunshine St., over the course of several days, according to the health department, and both they and customers “were inconsistently” masked.

The COVID-19 positive employees worked on September 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12 from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.

A soil collection ceremony will be held Saturday at Park Central Square.  It will be hosted by the City of Springfield, Greene County and the Springfield-Greene County Remembrance Coalition.

The soil will be collected from the site where three Black men—Fred Coker, Horace B. Duncan and Will Allen—were lynched in 1906.

Three more people have died of COVID-19 in Greene County.  The latest people to die of the illness were a man in his 40s, a woman in her 70s and a man in his 90s.  Two were associated with long-term care and all had underlying health conditions.

Nineteen people have died this month from COVID-19 in Greene County, and 49 have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

As of Wednesday morning, there were 5,128 cases of the illness in Greene County, and 2,025 of them were active.

CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — Hospitalizations for the coronavirus have risen across Missouri in recent days. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that three of the four highest days for hospitalizations have occurred over the past week, based on data from the state health department. The most recent data shows 1,021 patients in hospitals with confirmed or presumed cases on Saturday, the second-highest day on record. The highest was Sept. 9, when 1,040 patients were hospitalized. The fourth-highest number of hospitalizations on record occurred Friday, with 1,008 patients.

The Community Blood Center of the Ozarks will hold a blood drive in remembrance of four people who were killed in a shooting at a convenience store six months ago.  One of those killed at the Kum N Go on E. Chestnut Expressway was Springfield police officer, Christopher Walsh.

The Unite Springfield Blood Drive will be held Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, September 15-17, at the Springfield Donor Center, 220 W. Plainview Rd., from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Two more people have died in Greene County of COVID-19. The Springfield-Greene County Health Department reports the latest deaths were a man in his 70s and a man in his 80s.

That brings the number of deaths in Greene County in September to 16.  There have been 46 deaths since the pandemic began.

The number of cases topped 5000 Tuesday.  As of Tuesday morning, there were 5034 cases in Greene County, and 2067 of them were active.

There were 110 people in the hospital with COVID-19, and 30 of them were in the ICU.