Why was October so bad for COVID trends in Wichita and Kansas? ‘We really don’t know.’

October was a bad month for the spread of COVID-19 in the Wichita metro area and Kansas as a whole.

The last week of the month was the worst week of the pandemic for both the city and the state on key indicators. Both the rate of new cases compared to population and the positive test rate set record highs.

“We have to take COVID more seriously today than we did any other time this year because it’s more likely to catch COVID in Wichita and the surrounding areas than it’s ever been,” Mayor Brandon Whipple said.

Public health experts track several statistics and use several indicators to measure the spread of the coronavirus.

Between Sept. 30 and Nov. 2, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported:

• 29,478 new confirmed and probable cases statewide, with 5,592 from Sedgwick County
• 2,932 new cases among children
• A rate of 272 new cases per 100,000 people for the week ending Oct. 31, up from 139 new cases per 100,000 people for the week ending Oct. 3
• A positive test rate of 14.7% for the week ending Oct. 31, up from a positivity rate of 6.3% for the week ending Oct. 3
• 368 new deaths
• Total deaths surpassed 1,000 on Oct. 28
• 976 new hospitalizations, with 123 from Sedgwick County
• 281 new ICU admissions, with 46 from Sedgwick County
• 282 new clusters (as of Nov. 4)
• 25 new school clusters (as of Nov. 4)
• 14 new college clusters (as of Nov. 4)
• 14 new sports clusters (as of Nov. 4)
• 94 new nursing home clusters (as of Nov. 4)
• 186 new nursing home deaths (as of Nov. 4)

• 3,781 new confirmed cases

• 405 new cases among children

• 40 new deaths
• Total deaths surpassed 100 on Oct. 9
• A positive test rate of 19.2% for the week ending Oct. 31, up from a positivity rate of 5.4% for the week ending Oct. 3
• A rate of 227 new cases per 100,000 people for the week ending Oct. 31, up from 83 new cases per 100,000 people for the week ending Oct. 3
• The hospital status changed from “moderate” to “critical”
• 111 current hospitalizations on Nov. 2, up from 54 current hospitalizations on Sept. 28
• 60 current ICU patients on Nov. 2, up from 38 current ICU patients on Sept. 28
• Zero available ICU beds on Nov. 2, down from 33 available ICU beds on Sept. 28
• Two school clusters
• 14 nursing home clusters

The state health department only releases updates on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Cluster information is only reported on Wednesdays. Sedgwick County’s dashboard is updated daily.

Sedgwick County Health Director Adrienne Byrne said the rate of new cases and the positive test rate are the most important indicators on the weekly metrics report.

“What this (metrics report) doesn’t tell us is why — why are these numbers increasing?” Byrne told Wichita’s school board on Friday. “... We really don’t know.”

The numbers are likely going to continue to go up, Byrne said, and there will be more cases and more clusters.

“We’re barely into month eight, and if somebody says we know (why it is increasing) from this data, no we don’t,” Byrne said. “We have learned a lot in the last eight months on the data that there is, but we’re learning new things about COVID all the time. ... It just is not going in the direction that we would like it to go.”

The lack of data could be due in part to Byrne’s announcement in July that county epidemiologists had stopped contact tracing because they were “overwhelmed” with new cases.

Last week’s White House COVID-19 task force report for Kansas stated that “current transmissions are linked to home gatherings.” Lee Norman, the KDHE secretary, has also highlighted coronavirus spread at family gatherings, as did Dave Stewart, a Wesley Healthcare spokesman.

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that much of the growth we’re seeing in COVID-19 is coming from gatherings of family and friends (weddings, baby showers, birthday parties, etc.), where people tend to let down their guard,” Stewart said. “This is everyone’s responsibility.”

Whipple said the increase is due in part to a “perfect storm” of people becoming fatigued of prevention measures, longing to see their family and moving events indoors as the fall weather grows colder.

“We had a serious push for things to get back to normal with school, with sports, with work,” Whipple said. “When the numbers were lower, people let their guard down.”

Byrne, in talking to the school board, addressed whether the reopening of schools to in-person classes was a cause of the increase.

“We can’t say,” she said. “We would like to be able to point to what is the cause of the increase in the cases because then we could say let’s look at what we need to do to take care of that, to somehow make a change so that that’s not occurring. With the data that we have, we can’t say, there is nothing to confirm that it is because schools are open. Do we have cases in schools? Yes we do. But do we have clusters?”

Data from Wichita Public Schools shows 152 students and staff tested positive during the first 29 days of October. The district has had 274 total cases between Aug. 1 and Friday, though health officials have said they were likely infected outside of school. Derby High School and its football team have both been named as clusters, though no other schools in Sedgwick County have had outbreaks identified.

One Wichita school board member suggested the lack of data is due to a lack of national leadership that has made navigating the pandemic more difficult for local officials.

“I was just looking up to see if there’s any U.S. Department of Education data collection going on on how schools are reopening,” Ben Blankley said during the meeting. “And Betsy DeVos again, again, again she says ‘it’s not our problem. It’s not our problem. We’re not going to collect that data. We’re not going to figure out what’s working and what’s not working.’ So us as local education authorities have to kind of go it alone.”

Wichita schools decided to start bringing students back from fully remote learning, despite worsening indicators. The plan allows about 60% of middle and high school students to return to in-person class in a hybrid learning model next week.

The Wichita City Council allowed its mask law to expire last month, though Sedgwick County has a weaker mask order in place. The mayor said the council “sent a really bad message to the public” by dropping its ordinance as numbers were rising.

“We’ve controlled this before,” Whipple said. “We knocked these numbers just a couple months ago. This is a dumb virus with no strategy. We know how to prevent it. The idea that we need to just give in to the virus and surrender and let it ravage our high-risk populations — we just need to take this seriously and put our guard back up. We can’t give up. Our economic future really depends on it right now.”

The Sedgwick County Health Department announced that as of Monday, both Wesley Healthcare and Ascension Via Christi hospitals in Wichita had full ICUs. The lack of enough beds and staff to cover the surge in cases is not an issue isolated to Wichita.

In southeast Kansas, Pittsburg hospital officials told county commissioners that they hit capacity last month, according to the Morning Sun.

In southwest Kansas, a doctor told public radio station KCUR that a regional shortage of ICU beds meant at least one COVID-19 patient’s condition deteriorated before they received the intensive care they needed.

Whipple said Wichita is not yet at the point where non-COVID patients are dying preventable deaths due to a lack of hospital ICU beds and staff.

“We’re not there yet, but we’re getting close, if we don’t all start working together to take this thing seriously,” he said.

The Sedgwick County Commission meets Thursday afternoon and is expected to receive an update on the pandemic from health officer Dr. Garold Minns. Minns, the dean of the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita, did not respond to a request for comment on the hospital situation. The county’s health department has provided limited information to the public.

“There’s so much fear around COVID,” Byrne said. “... It’s scary because there’s so much that we don’t know.”

This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 5:30 AM.