Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 44

We seem to have settled in to a pattern of about 1,500 to 1,600 new cases per week and 250 to 260 Kansans hospitalized for COVID-19 at any given time. Those are manageable numbers, but at this point in the pandemic, with seasonal factors trending our way and vaccines readily available, one would hope that the state would still be trending downward on both measures. If the current pattern becomes the new normal we will have hundreds of unnecessary deaths every year. Instead, why not shoot for zero new cases, aka total elimination?

The Good: Test positivity dropped from 13.3% to 11.2% this week, according to Johns Hopkins. That's still too high (and fifth-worst in the country behind Alabama, Idaho, Mississippi and Iowa), but it's a healthy decline in a metric that has been stubbornly high.

The Bad: Hospital ICU capacity was 26% statewide as of May 12, according to the Kansas Hospital Association (it appears that the hospital association is now updating its dashboard once a month rather than once a week, so this metric will appear here intermittently). The foremost trouble spot was again the south-central region, at 14% capacity (including about 12.5% in Sedgwick County, which was up a tick from last week). It would be best if every region had a cushion of at least 20%. 

The Ugly: The infection reproduction rate ticked up from 0.92 to 0.94. That's still on the right track for overall active cases to keep decreasing. But with widespread availability of highly effective vaccines, there's no reason this number should go anywhere but down. Given the good news on test positivity, though, it's possible this number only went up this week because we tested more and therefore identified more cases.