Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 82

 

Everything continues to trend in the right direction. New cases are at their lowest level since last summer, hospitalizations are down and deaths are also leveling off (though we're still certainly going to hit 8,000 as a state soon).

The Good: Test positivity fell from 16.2% to 9.8%, according to Johns Hopkins. That still places Kansas 10th-highest in the nation, but the number continues to decline steadily. With both new cases and test positivity falling simultaneously, we can be quite certain we truly have less virus circulating among us.

The Also-Good: COVID hospitalizations continue to drop. 

• Statewide COVID hospitalizations fell from 639 to 503 this week, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. That's a slight slowdown compared to the decrease we saw last week, but still quite good. 
• Statewide cases in ICU fell from 119 to 94. This is going to drop more slowly because these patients are seriously ill.  
• COVID hospitalizations in the Wichita area fell from 137 to 98, and cases in ICU fell from 45 to 29. Both Wichita hospitals are still managing through surge ("contingency") plans, but hopefully will be able to scale back to normal operations soon. 
• COVID hospitalizations in the KC area (bistate) fell from 671 to 529 and cases in ICU fell from 114 to 87. 
• Overall ICU availability in the KC area rose from about 19.2% to 21.5%. Regular hospital bed availability only rose from about 15% to 16.2%. We are still catching up on delayed medical care, but fortunately the drop in COVID cases allows our hospitals to do so more comfortably.

The Stable: The infection reproduction rate, Rt, stayed at 0.69. Still good.