Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 65

There are some concerning signs in the data this week. Overall COVID-19 hospitalizations statewide continue to fall slowly, according to the Kansas Hospital Association. But that's not the case everywhere in the state, and new infections statewide actually rose this week for the first time in more than a month. This is roughly the time of year when last year's horrendous seasonal surge began. If we're starting that again it's going to get bad fast, because we're starting from a higher rate of spread this year. 

The Good: Total COVID hospitalizations statewide fell from right around 500 to 461 this week, according to the hospital association. But COVID hospitalizations in the Wichita area actually rose from 148 to 150 (and COVID cases in ICU there rose from 55 to 62). ICU availability in the Kansas City area continues to hover right around 20%, which isn't bad, but is about as low as we want to see it go, especially if we're about to experience another surge.

The Bad: The infection reproduction rate, Rt, rose from 0.88 to 1.1 this week. It makes sense that it went above 1.0, given that new cases are increasing slightly. But that's a pretty dramatic and disheartening increase.

The Ugly: Test positivity was already bad, and this week it got a little bit worse, going from 29.5% to 30.3% according to Johns Hopkins (again, only Idaho, Oklahoma and Iowa wee higher). If test positivity had gone down, I might think the slight increase in new cases was only due to increased testing. But when new cases AND test positivity are both going up at the same time, you can be fairly certain that the pace of infections is actually increasing.