Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 28

After a lot of good news last week, this week is more mixed in Kansas. It still appears that we're doing a good job of cutting down new cases, but the downward momentum of test positivity has stalled and our hospital ICUs are actually a bit more full than last week. Could be a result of the ebbs and flows caused by the holiday surge, but it should be a warning not to let our collective guard down. 

The Good: The infection reproduction rate, or Rt, is down yet again, now at 0.95. That's a good number, and the first time it's been that low since Christmas. It's been more than three weeks now since New Year's, so we should have absorbed all the new infections from the holiday surge now, and it doesn't appear that the ripple effect will be long-lasting.

The Bad: Hospital ICU capacity dropped from 25% to 21% this week, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. That may seem counterintuitive, given that the number of new infections is going down now. But remember, there's usually a lag between when a case is diagnosed, and when it results in hospitalization. So this dip in ICU availability, given the timing, could very well reflect the holiday surge. People were exposed to the coronavirus Dec. 25-Jan 1, they started to get sick (and test positive) about a week later and a week or two after that they ended up in the ICU. Fortunately, we have enough of a cushion to be able to absorb that surge and so far stay above 20% capacity statewide, which is a good mark. There are still trouble spots, though. Southwest Kansas was down to 9% capacity, for instance, with only two ICU beds available as of Jan. 22. And there's not a lot of room to transfer patients to Wichita's ICUs, which are still over capacity (although the number of COVID patients in ICUs there is now as low as it's been since the beginning of November).

The Ugly: Test positivity rose from 28.1% to 28.4% this week, according to Johns Hopkins. That's not a huge jump, but it was already quite high. We would like to see some sustained decline in this metric to be sure we're identifying most of our active infections.