The Good: The infection reproduction rate in Kansas continued to fall, from 0.87 last week to 0.82 this week. It's dropping a little more slowly now, but 0.82 is a really good number and means the total number of active cases should continue decreasing steadily.
The Bad: Despite the good news from Wichita, overall ICU capacity statewide dropped from 34% to 31%, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. Every region of the state remains above 20% availability, so there is nothing critical here, but clearly some hospitals were more full this week, including the University of Kansas Hospital, which added five new COVID-19 patients Friday alone. That led KU's top infectious disease doctor to say the numbers were making him "a little uneasy," and when Dana Hawkinson talks about the pandemic, I listen. What would cause hospitalizations to go up even as overall cases go down? Two possibilities: a lack of testing (we're missing cases) or new variants of the coronavirus that are more likely to cause severe illness (we should probably be testing more for these mutations).
The Ugly: Test positivity rose from 22.1% last week to 22.7% this week, according to Johns Hopkins. It's not a big jump, but this number really should be going down every week. When it's this persistently high, there are better odds that we're missing lots of cases, which makes it harder for us to stay ahead of surges that lead to lots of hospitalizations and deaths. Kansas now ranks dead last among all of the states in test positivity, at least as calculated by Hopkins.
Bonus: A Johns Hopkins doctor made headlines Friday when he said that COVID-19 could be "mostly gone" in the USA by April, because new cases keep declining and the number of vaccinated people keeps rising. He might be right. I certainly hope so. But there are a few reasons that I think yet another surge could hit before we have vaccinated enough people to achieve herd immunity.
1. Reopenings (including schools): Bars, restaurants, entertainment venues, they're all opening back up, even in places like the Kansas City area that have been more aggressive about containing COVID-19 than the rest of the state. And state leaders want nearly all kids back in the classroom by next month. This is understandable, given that cases keep declining and businesses have been struggling. But the virus is still circulating, and although it's circulating at a lower level than a month ago, it's still a high enough level that our contact tracing won't be able to keep up. That means untraced transmissions, community spread, and unidentified infectious people who will be increasingly congregating with other people. That's a recipe for another surge.
2. Variants: The UK variant, the South Africa variant, the Brazilian variant — all spread more easily than the traditional COVID-19 coronavirus we've come to know and loathe. And they're making their way to Kansas, slowly but surely. To protect yourself from these mutant viruses, make sure your mask is multi-layered and fits well if you're going to be in close contact with other people, especially indoors.
3. March Madness: In addition to the mega-spike in the fall caused by the seasonal nature of upper respiratory viruses, we also quite clearly saw mini-spikes of COVID-19 about a week after Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year's. Which is extremely predictable. Those are times when people gather and when people gather, COVID-19 spreads. The next gathering is March Madness. Even if there will be few fans allowed at the games this year, you can bet they're still going to get together in bars and houses to watch their teams together. And unlike Thanksgiving and Christmas, those games will be happening every weekend for about five straight weeks (more, if you count the conference tournaments leading up to it). With bars open again and new variants floating around, March Madness could very well cause yet another spike.
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