Kansas COVID-19 Update, Week 77

 

Things continue to be rough in Kansas. We've now basically equaled our previous peak of covid hospitalizations set in December 2020, although we haven't quite reached our ICU admissions peak. It is hard to fathom how this happened, given that this year we have vaccines and in December 2020 we did not. But vaccines are only good if people receive them. KU Hospital's daily covid updates have generally shown that about 90-95% of their covid patients are unvaccinated. A Kansas City Star article this week showed similar numbers for Saint Luke's (10 vaccinated covid patients out of more than 200 hospitalized for covid). Large numbers of unvaccinated people plus new more contagious variants is a recipe for disaster. The CDC is out with new data this week showing that with boosters the vaccines continue to hold up extremely well against Delta and Omicron. This is the key to getting us out of this bleak winter: getting vaccinated, getting boosted.

The Good: The infection reproduction rate, Rt, is back down to 1.1 this week after that insane jump to 2.7 last week. That suggests that it might have been a data fluke like I had hoped. We still want to get this number below 1.0 though. That's the only way to provide some light at the end of the tunnel for our hospitals.

The Bad: Test positivity rose from 42.5% to 43.4% this week, according to Johns Hopkins. Not a huge jump, but it was already quite high. Kansas is fifth in the country behind Alabama, Alaska, New Jersey and Utah.

The Ugly: Here are the hospital numbers:

• Statewide COVID hospitalizations are up from 1,128 to 1,258 this week, according to the Kansas Hospital Association.
• Statewide cases in ICU rose from 271 to 279. The bar to getting admitted to an ICU is extremely high right now. All 279 of those people are extremely ill.
• COVID hospitalizations in the Wichita area rose from 253 to 277, and cases in ICU rose from 77 to 80.
• COVID hospitalizations in the KC area (bistate) rose from 1,294 to 1,371 and cases in ICU rose from 246 to 250. 
• Overall ICU availability in the KC area fell from 12.5% to about 11.4%. Even regular hospital beds were down to about 15% capacity available, which is as low as I've seen it. Given the staff shortages, hospitals are functionally full. Bursting at the seams, in fact.