Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 35

Well, we know the coronavirus is still with us here in Kansas... because it seems to be circulating within the KU men's basketball team at the worst possible time. But overall things are still looking pretty good. New cases continue to trend downward. We're now averaging about 250 a day statewide, which is a level not seen since last June. We were recording about ten times more than that in January. So we've come a long way.

The Good: After jumping up last week, the infection reproduction rate (Rt) appears to have stabilized, even dropping a tick from 0.88 to 0.87 this week. There's always some uncertainty about this metric because it depends on testing, but unless we're at the uppermost range of potential missed cases, the true number is still below 1.0, and that means the pandemic is losing.

The Bad: After dropping steadily for several weeks, test positivity barely moved this week, falling only from 13.7% to 13.6%, according to Johns Hopkins. It's still a major improvement from where we were a month ago, but Kansas remains among the bottom five states in this metric and that hampers our ability to get a handle on how much virus is really circulating (and nail down precise measures for things like Rt).   

The (Maybe) Ugly: Hospital ICU capacity dropped again, from 30% to 28%, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. But I have some reasons to doubt the accuracy of that. For one thing, the percentage of hospitals reporting, which had been at or close to 100% since November dropped to 91% this week. So we're missing some data, but it's probably a good sign that some hospitals are now so unconcerned that they aren't even reporting any more. And the data that is there suggests that the number of ICU beds taken up by COVID-19 patients is quite low right now (only 48 statewide). 

Plus, the University of Kansas Hospital reported this week that it was down to five patients with active COVID-19 infections, including just one in ICU (another 18 COVID patients were still recovering in the hospital, but were no longer contagious). That's down from 167 infectious patients in December, which is remarkable progress. KU is the state's biggest hospital, so this indicates that it's unlikely other hospitals are facing capacity issues due to COVID. It also indicates that at this point the pandemic is probably mainly circulating among young people (like the KU basketball players) who are less likely to be hospitalized. Which makes sense, given that a significant percentage of our seniors are now vaccinated. 

In short, I'm not too worried about the hospitals right now. But that could still change if we have a major surge. A study just published by the Mayo Clinic showed that even middle-aged adults are at significant risk of hospitalization if they get COVID. Only about 3.5% of those 18-34 who caught it had to be hospitalized, but that number rose to almost 10% among those 35-49 and 18% among those 50-64 (who, by and large, aren't vaccinated yet in most states). So if the pandemic wave turns upward again, we could still need a significant number of hospital beds. And that risk will probably remain until we get vaccines to everybody 35 and up.  

Bonus: Want to see how well your county has done at keeping the virus in check? The Wichita Eagle published a county-by-county breakdown of per capita cases and deaths this week to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the pandemic. The standout counties in terms of fewest confirmed cases were Woodson, Riley, Douglas and Jewell. Riley and Douglas are pretty remarkable success stories, given that they're home to large universities that were doing a lot of testing and therefore would be expected to find more cases than other counties. The lowest per capita COVID death rates belong to Hamilton, Riley, Smith, Douglas, Atchison, Greeley and Linn counties. That's also an important metric, obviously, but it's more subject to being skewed by things that aren't directly related to mitigating transmission of the virus — like the age of the county's population and the access to medical care.