Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 64

We're still moving in the right direction. New COVID cases and hospitalizations continue to trend downward in Kansas, though slowly. The key question is what will happen in November/December.  Last year those months were a nightmare. But last year we didn't have a serious July/August surge like we did this year. So how much of these waves are seasonal, and how much are they driven instead by the timing of when new variants reach your region? We just don't know. But I'd feel a lot better if we had 90% or more of our eligible folks vaccinated by the time winter arrives.

The Good: The infection reproduction rate, Rt, fell from 0.93 to 0.88 this week. Dipping below 0.9 is a great step and should accelerate the downturn in new cases. 

The Neutral: Hospitalizations from COVID continue to fall and are now just below 500 statewide, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. They were well above 700 at the height of the Delta surge, so this is much better. But ICU capacity remains a bit strained, because it appears non-COVID hospitalizations have increased. Wichita's ICUs remain over normal capacity, though COVID hospitalizations fell from 157 to 148 and cases in ICU fell from 63 to 55. Would be nice to see those numbers go down faster. The Kansas City area's ICUs had about 18% availability as of Oct. 14, which was slightly less than last week's 20%, but there too the percentage of beds taken up by COVID patients seems to have gone down. It could be that hospitals are once again playing catch up in treating serious non-COVID health issues, and flu season hasn't even really started yet. It's a good time to get your flu shot.

The Ugly: Test positivity fell this week, but only from 31.6% to 29.5%, according to Johns Hopkins. That's fourth-worst behind Idaho, Oklahoma and Iowa.