Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 40

We're entering a new phase now. It looks like cases may be increasing in Kansas, which is not unusual right now. They're rising in 38 states. The increase is slow at this point, and the overall case level is relatively low (roughly comparable to June 2020 levels). But we've seen in Michigan that cases can still accelerate quickly. The key, of course, is vaccinations. We're at a solid 36% or so of the Kansas population with at least one dose and making solid progress. In a month we could be approaching herd immunity. But we're not there yet.

The Good: Hospital ICU capacity rose from 29% to 30%, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. Overall COVID hospitalizations in Kansas rose from 252 to 265, but that's a little slower rate of increase than last week, and every region of the state has at least 23% capacity right now. So we have some cushion if there's another surge.

The Bad: Test positivity fell, but only from 11.8% to 11.7%, according to Johns Hopkins. We would love to see a bigger decrease than that in order to give us more confidence in our case numbers. Kansas' positivity rate is 7th-worst in the country, behind Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Alabama, Mississippi and South Dakota. 

The Ugly: The infection reproduction rate rose from 0.93 to 1.1. That's a significant jump, and we've passed the key 1.0 threshold, which is when we go from decreasing cases to increasing cases. Our state's lack of testing makes this number hard to pin down, week to week. Last week's number may have been a little artificially low.