More Kansas counties enter COVID school red zone — but case rates improved statewide

More Kansas counties have moved into the red zone of one school reopening criteria due to high numbers of new coronavirus cases. The addition of more counties to the list comes as the Wichita area and statewide rates for new cases compared to population improved last week.

Sedgwick County is one of 75 counties in the red zone of the incidence rate, Kansas Department of Health and Environment data shows. That is 10 more counties in the worst school reopening zone than a week ago.

Only three of the state’s 105 counties are in the least-restrictive green zone, which had seven counties last week.

The COVID-19 case rates come from a KDHE map published Monday using data through Saturday. The map shows the county incidence rates, which are a measure of new coronavirus cases over the past two weeks compared to 100,000 population.

The rate of new cases is one of five school reopening indicators in a color-coded guide from the Kansas State Department of Education. The red zone is the most serious of the pandemic, suggesting that schools should close to all in-person classes and stop sports practices and games.

Local school boards are not required to follow the state’s gating criteria, though many use it as a guide or used it to create their own guides.

Only the green zone in the school reopening guide permits all in-person classes and extracurricular activities.

Just three of the state’s 105 counties had rates in the green zone, which means between zero and 50 new cases per 100,000 people. Those counties were Harper, Wichita and Republic. Harper and Wichita counties were the only ones in the state with zero new cases over the past two weeks.

The KDHE case rate map, which uses statistics for Sept. 20 through Oct. 3, placed 11 counties in the yellow zone and 16 counties in the orange zone. Those zones use a blend of in-person, hybrid and remote learning. They also restrict sports, especially high-risk activities like football.

In the Wichita area, Sedgwick County was joined in the red zone by Reno, Butler, Cowley and Kingman counties. Sumner County was in the orange zone and Harvey County was in the yellow zone. All of the counties except for Harvey County had improvements in their most recent case rates compared to the revised numbers from last week.

The most recent numbers could be an under-count, though, due to delays in reporting.

Reno County had a rate of 274, down from 340.

Butler County had a rate of 176, down from 214.

Cowley County had a rate of 163, down from 226.

Sedgwick County had a rate of 158, down from 175.

Kingman County had a rate of 154, down from 350.

Sumner County had a rate of 123, down from 171.

Harvey County had a rate of 90, up from 87.

In Sedgwick County, the case rate has improved since the week of Aug. 9-15. That week, which saw 1,009 new cases of COVID-19, was the worst of the pandemic so far for the state’s second-largest county. It contributed to a local two-week rate of 326 new cases per 100,000 people as of Aug. 22 — more than double the red zone threshold as boards of education debated whether and when to start in-person classes.

Only once since then has the weekly trend increased. Sedgwick County briefly entered the orange zone at the start of September before a one-week increase later that month pushed the rate back into the red zone. The local trend has declined for the past two weeks.

The weekly statewide trend has also declined for the past two weeks after Kansas recorded its worst week of the coronavirus pandemic Sept. 13-19. However, the most recent two-week case rate for Kansas is still well above the red zone threshold at 228.

Despite so many new COVID-19 cases in the Wichita area that Sedgwick County is in the red zone, it is far from the worst area of the state. There were two counties with rates greater than 1,000 new cases per 100,000 residents.

The four Kansas counties with the worst rates of new cases were Rooks at 1,118, Logan at 1,110, Grant at 993 and Rawlins at 949. All four are rural communities in western Kansas, which as a region has especially high rates. The worst counties east of I-135 are Nemaha at 420, Franklin at 419 and Brown at 418.

The KDHE also releases a map on the two-week positive test rate, which is another school reopening indicator. That map shows 13 counties in the red zone, which starts at 15% of coronavirus tests coming back positive for COVID-19.

Rawlins County had the worst rate at 71.74%, followed by Cheyenne County at 45.63%.

All counties in the Wichita area are in either the yellow or green zones of the positivity rate. Sedgwick County’s two-week rate was placed at 5.74%. That is at the low end of the yellow zone, which runs from 5% to 10%. It is a decrease from the 5.83% that was originally reported for the previous week.

This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 4:54 PM.