Kansas sees third record-breaking weekend in a row for new COVID-19 cases

Kansas has recorded its third record-breaking weekend in a row for new COVID-19 cases.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported 2,446 new cases of COVID-19 on Monday. That increase is the most of any Monday-Wednesday-Friday report from the KDHE, surpassing the 2,113 new cases set one week ago, which broke the record of 2,055 from two weeks ago.

Kansas has now had 78,676 total cases of COVID-19 since the coronavirus pandemic hit the state. There was one new death reported between Friday and Monday, raising the total to 976.

There were 62 more hospitalizations reported over the weekend, as well as eight more ICU admissions and four more patients on ventilators. There have been totals of 3,646 hospitalizations, 1,009 ICU admissions and 313 patients on ventilators.

The KDHE also reported 7,223 more negative tests, raising the total to 540,032.

Sedgwick County had 454 of the new cases and five of the new hospitalizations. The county now has cumulative totals of 12,004 cases and 491 hospitalizations.

Sedgwick County was one of three counties in the Wichita area to be in the red zone for the KDHE’s nursing home metric. The weekly nursing home metric, which is a measure of the positive test rate and the level of testing compared to population, had 32 of the state’s 105 counties in the red zone. Last week, 35 counties were in the red zone.

The nursing home red zone equates to a positive test rate above 10% in the county, which means long-term care facilities must test their staff at least twice a week. The rule was set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Reno County had the highest positivity rate of the red zone counties in the Wichita area at 19.4%, followed by Sedgwick County at 11.5% and Butler County at 11.4%. In the yellow zone were Harvey County at 9.8%, Cowley County at 7.7% and Kingman County at 7.2%.

Sumner County was also in the yellow zone despite its positivity rate of 17.9% because it did not have enough tests per population. Nursing homes in yellow zone counties must test their staff at least once a week.

The data period was for Oct. 11 through Saturday. The positive test rates increased from last week in all of those counties, except for Harvey County.