Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 39

Another week, another win. New cases are still declining in Kansas (albeit slowly) and are at roughly the same level as last June. Meanwhile, about one out of every three Kansans has now had at least one vaccine dose. We seem to be winning the race against the variants so far, but the states around us aren't doing as well. The number of new cases is growing again in Nebraska, Colorado and Oklahoma (it's basically flat in Missouri). The virus doesn't respect state lines, so it's fair to assume that some of those new cases may seed more cases here as well. 

The Good: The infection reproduction rate fell from 0.94 to 0.93 in Kansas this week. That's not much change, obviously (and may reflect nothing more than less testing). But we're at the point where every week this metric stays about the same it's a win. 

The Neutral: Hospital ICU capacity rose from 28% to 29%, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. That's a little better, and the lowest region within the state (south-central Kansas) is now up to 19%. But in taking a deeper look at the data there's some reason for concern. The number of COVID-19 patients hospitalized (in any bed, regular or ICU) had been dropping every week since January. Until this week. This week it rose from 230 to 252. That's still way lower than our peak (when we had about 1,600 COVID patients in Kansas hospitals), and only 43 of those 252 patients are in ICU, so far. But it's still something to keep an eye on.   

The Bad: Test positivity rose from 11.4% to 11.8%, according to Johns Hopkins. That's fifth-worst in the country, behind only Idaho, Iowa, Michigan and South Dakota. It's not a huge change from last week, but I feel like a broken record noting every week what a poor job Kansas is doing on testing. Kansas City area health officials said last week that not enough people are getting tested, even if they have symptoms. It would be great to see that change, but at this point I'm not sure what would make people voluntarily become more diligent about getting tested.