Kansas COVID-19 update, Week 2

Based on the latest available data, Kansans seem to be spreading COVID to each other a bit less than last week, which is good! But we're still spreading it too much to change the trajectory of the outbreak from one that is growing to one that is shrinking. And we're starting to see evidence of that in our hospitalization numbers.

(Read to the bottom for bonus content on one county that HAS turned things around).

The Good: Our reproduction rate has ticked down ever-so-slightly from 1.12 to about 1.09 or 1.10. The reproduction rate, or "Rt" (or "R0"), remember, is the number of COVID-19 infections that each infected person causes, on average. When it is above 1.0, the outbreak spreads. When it's below 1.0, the outbreak shrinks. We can reduce it by doing things like social distancing and wearing masks. At our current Rt, the number of COVID-19 cases in Kansas will double about every 27 days. But we're not that far away from making our case numbers shrink (like we did in May). It's been hard to pin down just how effective masks are at preventing the spread of COVID-19. But a new analysis of all the mask studies available determined that if 95% of people in a given area wear masks, it reduces the spread of COVID-19 in that area by at least 30% (and the authors say that's a conservative estimate). That 30% reduction would be more than enough to get Kansas' Rt below 1.0.

The Bad: After weeks of increasing COVID-19 cases, Kansas hospitals are starting to feel more strain. Earlier this month, we had about half our ICU beds available. As of July 23, we had 36% available. That's still plenty of capacity statewide, but it's not spread evenly, and the overall trend is bad. In three weeks, the number of ICU beds taken up by COVID-19 patients doubled, from 49 on July 1, to 98 on July 23. Remember: hospitalizations are a lagging indicator (and ICU admissions tend to lag even more). That means that even if we take action TODAY to reduce COVID-19 spread, hospitalizations will almost certainly continue to rise for another two or three weeks. If you wait until your hospitals are full, you've waited too long. That's when things that were previously unthinkable happen, like an overburdened hospital in Texas preparing to decide which patients they will turn away and send home to die. To be clear, we're not near that point in Kansas right now. But two months ago that hospital in Texas wasn't either.

The Ugly: We're still not testing enough. According to Johns Hopkins, our test positivity rate (the percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive), has risen from 10.7 to 11.0%. That puts Kansas among the top 10 states in a stat we do NOT want to be top 10 in. Remember: the World Health Organization recommends a test positivity rate of no more than 5% to be reasonably confident you're identifying most cases of COVID-19. In Kansas, test positivity rates remain persistently high (about 17%) in Wyandotte County in particular.

Bonus: It is possible to turn things around, and turn them around quite quickly. For evidence, look at Douglas County. Douglas County, home to the University of Kansas' main campus, was recording steady increases in new COVID-19 cases from mid-June until early July. Then, almost as suddenly as the rate of new cases spiked, it began dropping quickly. What happened? Around the end of June, the local government voted to close bars and require masks in public places. For about a week, the rate of new cases kept going up (because a lot of people had already been exposed). And then it dropped, and has kept dropping for a couple weeks. Given the robust bar scene in Lawrence, it's likely closing that one industry had a bigger effect there than it would have in other counties. And Douglas County still has to be diligent, because its rate of new cases remains relatively high. But they've reversed the growth trend, and in tracking COVID-19 trends are everything. Remember that: these stats reflect a point in time — they're important, but it's more important to watch whether things are trending better or trending worse. Because in a viral pandemic, the trend is not likely to change unless there is a behavior change, like there was in Douglas County.