Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 29

 

The website that I use to track the infection reproduction, or Rt, has now stopped updating.  So I'm going to start using a different site this week, which is going to temporarily throw the trend data for a bit of a loop. But overall, things are looking pretty good. New cases in Kansas keep declining steadily and the test positivity rate is also down this week, which means the decline in new cases isn't due to less testing. There are still dangers out there — the amount of COVID circulating in some parts of the state is still too high for comfort, and new variants that are more contagious (and maybe more deadly) could still come here and cause significant pain. But the trends are good. It's looking more and more like we have weathered the fall surge and we now have an opportunity, if we can get a lot of people vaccinated, to make sure we don't ever have another wave like that. Which would be great, because we're still averaging 500 deaths every two or three weeks because of the fall surge (we topped 3,500 total this week). 

The Good: Hospital ICU capacity improved to 22% statewide, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. That's only a single percentage point better than last week, but every region of the state was at 12% or better this week, so the beds seem better distributed.

The Neutral: According to this new site I'm using, Kansas' Rt is right at 1.0. That would be worse than last week, but this site calculates Rt in a slightly different way, so it's an imperfect comparison. Let's wait and see what the next few weeks bring. Based on the falling new cases/test positivity, I think we'll be below 1.0 soon.

The Bad: Test positivity dropped from 28.4% to 25.7%, according to Johns Hopkins. The trend is good, but the number's still way too high and I wish it was dropping faster. The more testing we do, the easier it will be to nail down a solid Rt number. As it is, we're not testing enough, which is why we end up with a range of different Rt estimates from different sources. 

Bonus:

This week's bonus is a series of heat maps that show where the virus has been spreading most lately, and where it's been most prevalent/deadly throughout the pandemic. All of them are based on cases/deaths per capita.

This one shows which counties had the most new cases per capita from Jan. 13-27. As you can see, things are looking pretty good, with the exception of a few troublesome counties. 

This one shows which counties had the most new deaths per capita from Jan. 13-27. It looks a lot worse, because deaths are a lagging indicator. Even though new cases are slowing down, lots of Kansans who contracted the coronavirus weeks or even months ago are still dying. 

This one shows which counties have had the most cases per capita since the start of the pandemic. Although cases first started showing up last spring in the Kansas City area, as you can see it's since been western Kansas that has really taken the brunt of things. And this only reflects confirmed cases. 

This one shows which counties have had the most COVID deaths per capita since the start of the pandemic. Again, western Kansas has been absolutely ravaged. When you look at the raw death numbers from those counties they don't look like much, but based on their total populations they're devastating. Indeed, as of mid-January, the top 10 counties for per capita COVID deaths in Kansas all had fewer than 11,000 residents. The pandemic's been bad everywhere, but it's been a nightmare for rural Kansas.