Page said there was not an overarching plan for how to spend the money and no single official in charge of coordinating how it’s spent. “We will have lots of staff focused on this,” he said.

“We see this really not as one crisis, but three crises,” Page said. “It’s a health crisis, it’s a humanitarian crisis and it’s an economic crisis. And so we’re looking at each one of those and trying to understand the role of county government and how we can help people get back on their feet.”

Dr. Alex Garza, head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Pandemic Task force, said in a news conference Tuesday that around 30% of those who catch the coronavirus will have no symptoms.

“We know from this disease that a significant portion (of people) don’t have a fever or cough,” Garza said. “About 30 percent will remain asymptomatic and they will continue to spread the virus. So that’s one of the challenges we have. It’s very important to practice social distancing, hand washing, and keeping surfaces clean, (because) it’s difficult to tell who is infected and who isn’t.”

Garza said 586 people in the St. Louis region were hospitalized Tuesday, up from 545 a day earlier. Those patients have either tested positive for COVID-19 or are “patients under investigation.”