Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 75

Well, if you've been paying any attention, you know things are bad right now. Yes, Omicron is less severe, some percentage of the people who get it will still have to be hospitalized, especially if they're unvaccinated. And right now it's spreading so fast that even that small percentage is enough, in raw numbers, to overwhelm hospitals. Hospitals in some highly vaccinated regions are seeing lots of people with "incidental covid," meaning they were hospitalized for something else and then tested positive for covid in the hospital, but don't really have covid symptoms. This is the Omicron effect. It does not result in as much of a net increase in hospitalizations (although it does still strain resources because those patients have to be isolated). But that does not seem to be what's going on in our region. Our hospitals seem to be fighting a double whammy: severe covid cases caused by unvaccinated Delta and Omicron patients, and staff shortages driven by mild Omicron breakthrough infections. We haven't yet matched last winter's high-water mark for covid hospitalizations (about 1,250), but we're close (about 1,000) and our hospitals have less capacity to deal with it this year.

The Good: The infection reproduction rate, Rt, is still at 1.1 according to the site I use. It's good that it hasn't increased, but we're still above the level where cases would start going down. The curve, while not any steeper, continues on an upward trajectory. 

The Bad: Test positivity in Kansas is 36.9%, according to Johns Hopkins (I'm citing calculation Approach No. 5, since that is the one that allows comparisons to the most other states). That's fourth-worst in the country behind New Jersey, Alabama and Utah. 

The Ugly: Here's this week's hospital situation:

• Statewide COVID hospitalizations are up from 827 to 987 this week, according to the Kansas Hospital Association.
• Statewide cases in ICU rose from 232 to 242.
• COVID hospitalizations in the Wichita area rose from 181 to 209, while cases in ICU there fell from 66 to 62.
• COVID hospitalizations in the KC area (bistate) rose from 840 to 1,047 and cases in ICU there rose from 196 to 213. 
• Overall ICU availability in the KC area fell from 10.02% to 9.14%. There are about 50 ICU beds left in the entire metro area. And this is a metro with about 25 hospitals. Every facility is basically full, or nearly full.  

Bonus: As of Saturday morning, KU Hospital (the largest in the state) was reporting 139 covid patients. Only 8 were fully vaccinated (the hospital's FB page has helpfully clarified that "'Fully vaccinated' is someone who has received two doses of the respective mRNA vaccines or one shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. Booster shots are not included in the definition.") I just don't know how anyone can look at those numbers and say the vaccines aren't working. If they weren't doing anything, we would expect about 55% of those hospitalized to be vaccinated (because about 55% of all Kansans are fully vaxxed). Instead, it's about 6%. The effect of the vaccine is even more striking if you adjust for age. The Kansans who should be most at risk of hospitalization (the elderly) are 90% fully vaccinated, while the unvaccinated (including 0-5 year-olds) skew young and should have less hospitalization risk. Yet it's the younger, unvaccinated half of our state's population that is swamping our biggest hospital. If that isn't an ironclad argument in favor of vaccination, I don't know what is.