Sedgwick County passes 10,000 cases of COVID-19 as Kansas has record-breaking weekend

Kansas broke its record for the most new cases of COVID-19 in a single report as Wichita’s home county passed a milestone.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported 2,055 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday, included 196 children. The increase was from the last KDHE report on Friday.

The weekend increase was only the second time one of the KDHE’s Monday-Wednesday-Friday reports had 2,000 or more new cases. It set the record for the biggest increase, breaking the old record of 2,037 new cases from two weeks ago, on Sept. 28.

The state health department has released updated pandemic statistics three times a week since the middle of May.

There have now been 67,862 total cases statewide during the coronavirus pandemic. Sedgwick County passed 10,000 cases on Monday. The KDHE reported 10,149 cases in Sedgwick County — an increase of 310 over the weekend.

Kansas also added eight new deaths, raising the total for the coronavirus disease to 771 dead. All of the patients who died were older than 45 years old. Seven were men and one was a woman.

Three did not have racial information reported, three were white and three were listed as “other race,” which does not include Black, American Indian or Asian. Two did not have ethnicity data reported, two were Latino and four were not Latino.

The state health agency reported 54 more COVID-19 patients were hospitalized. Every age group except for infants to 9-year-olds had at least one new hospitalization. There have now been 3,239 total hospitalizations.

There were 13 more patients admitted to intensive care and three more placed on ventilators. Kansas has had 890 total patients in the ICU with 274 needing ventilators. There were 26 more patients discharged, bringing total to 2,301.

Kansas also recorded 9,837 more negative tests over the weekend, raising the tally to 504,219 negative tests.

This story was originally published October 12, 2020 at 1:40 PM.