Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 47

 

The numbers haven't changed much this week. We're still at a relatively low level of COVID spread, but not going down very quickly (meanwhile nationwide cases have now fallen to their lowest level since the start of the pandemic in March 2020). Things are going relatively well in Kansas, but there are a couple regional trouble spots to keep an eye on, both inside the state and nearby.

The Good: Hospital ICU capacity was up from 30% availability to 33% this week, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. Every region of the state had at least 23% of beds available. There were only 107 COVID-19 patients in Kansas hospitals as of June 2, and only 35 of them were in ICU. The low hospitalization numbers come even as new cases are relatively stagnant, which is more evidence that most of the new cases now are in younger people who are less likely to be vaccinated. While COVID hospitalizations are rare among younger people, they do happen. In fact, a recent CDC study found that COVID hospitalizations among teens were actually on the rise in March and April, when they were falling in basically every other age demographic. With vaccines now available to everyone 12 and up, hopefully we can change that.

The Bad: The infection reproduction rate (Rt) fell this week, but only from 1.0 to 0.99. That's still one of the highest rates in the country (for comparison's sake, the rate in Vermont is 0.46, which will speed that state toward complete elimination of the virus in relatively short order). A rate of 0.99 puts us in the range where total active cases will decline extremely slowly, and could soon start rising again.

The Ugly: Test positivity was up this week from 12.0% to 12.6%, according to Johns Hopkins. That's third-highest in the country, behind Alabama and Idaho.   

Bonus: Here's where to watch: southwest Kansas and southwest Missouri. According to the Kansas Hospital Association's data, new COVID cases are going down in most regions of the state. But they're going up in southwest Kansas, and they're going up fast. New cases bottomed out at 39 there the week of May 12. They've risen every week since — to 47, 116 and now 194. That suggests possible exponential spread there. I would avoid that region if unvaccinated or at risk of complications.

Southwest Missouri is also showing some signs of trouble. The CEO of CoxHealth, one of the predominant hospital systems there, tweeted this week that the number of COVID patients in his facilities was hovering between 35 and 40, which was 2.5 times higher than two weeks ago. Meanwhile, the percentage of symptomatic CoxHealth patients testing positive for COVID was almost 20%, up from about 5% just three weeks earlier. That's cause for concern. Several parts of Missouri could long remain incubators for COVID, given that the state is among the bottom 15 in the country for COVID vaccination rate, with a little over 42% of the population receiving at least one dose. Cases in Missouri were actually UP about 10% last week — the only state where that was the case. What happens in Missouri doesn't stay in Missouri. It will inevitably affect Kansas as well.