Kansas COVID trends improve ‘dramatically,’ Norman says as vaccine roll-out trudges on

As coronavirus pandemic trends improve “dramatically” and doses of COVID-19 vaccines continue to “trickle” in, public health officials are urging Kansans to keep wearing masks and following other guidelines.

“I think there’s a lot of reason for some optimism throughout the state ... the numbers statewide are improving rather dramatically,” said Dr. Lee Norman, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment secretary, during a Tuesday media briefing hosted by the University of Kansas Health System.

“We’re seeing a significant reduction in the number of new cases.”

Norman said Monday’s data showed new cases dropped by 24% in Kansas, the positive test rate dropped by one-third and the rate of new deaths dropped 73%. Hospitals are seeing improved staffing, with a simultaneous drop in the number of COVID patients to a “manageable” level.

The KDHE on Wednesday reported 3,262 new cases of COVID-19, 96 new deaths, 151 new hospitalizations and 49 new ICU admissions since Monday.

Since the pandemic reached Kansas in March, there have been 272,517 cases, 3,718 deaths, 8,268 hospitalizations and 2,259 ICU admissions.

In Sedgwick County, the KDHE has reported 49,435 cases, 517 deaths, 1,164 hospitalizations and 335 ICU admissions since March. Since Monday, the county has had 465 new cases, 15 new deaths, 51 new hospitalizations and 19 new ICU admissions.

Wichita hospitals continue to have fewer COVID-19 patients, but their ICUs remain full and their status is “critical,” according to the Sedgwick County Health Department.

“Hospitals are happy to kind of see continued decline in the hospitalizations,” said Dee Dee Dewell, an outreach representative for Ascension Via Christi, during a Tuesday teleconference for regional hospitals. “The numbers keep going in the right direction.”

Dr. Richard Watson, of Cheyenne Mountain Software, said the state is experiencing improving hospital capacity and patient transfer times.

“Wichita’s kind of interesting ... in that capacity has still been tight across the board,” he said. “I think this is because they ended up taking a lot more of the high-acuity patients, and they’ve just hung on longer in the system. ... We’re still depending on the region to continue to utilize good practices to mitigate that.”

The Kansas Hospital Association reported that south-central Kansas has only 15% available capacity of adult, staffed ICU beds. That is the worst of any region in the state, and it falls in the red zone of the White House COVID-19 Task Force.

Still, health professionals are encouraged by fewer COVID-19 hospitalizations and other improving trends.

“The numbers are trending in the right direction at this point,” said Steve Maheux, of the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment, in Tuesday’s hospital teleconference for the Kansas City metro. “It’s always encouraging to see something like that. But there’s the caveat that we feel obligated to provide that we can’t let up now. You got to maintain your social distancing practices, wear those masks and all that.”

Adherence to those public health guidelines is a big reason for the improved numbers, he said.

But concerns remain that trends could reverse.

“Realizing that this is a breather before a spring spike, we all do expect there, even with the vaccine, to be a spring spike,” Watson said during the KC hospital report. “But hopefully it will be remarkably blunted over anything we have had so far.”

Vaccines

Much of the public health focus on the coronavirus pandemic has shifted to vaccinations.

The KDHE on Wednesday reported that 149,246 people have gotten the first dose and 28,105 have gotten the second dose. Those were increases of 16,944 first doses and 2,887 second doses since Monday.

Norman said that data on vaccine administration, especially in the federal database, “lags behind reality.” Public health officials have been emphasizing getting shots in arms over doing immediate data reporting.

“Believe it or not, there’s a lot of communities, particularly out in western Kansas, that have very poor access to high-speed internet and bandwidth,” Norman said. “Literally bandwidth is a problem for some of these smaller communities.”

Wichita businessman Jon Rolph, who hosts the regional hospital teleconferences, said there are approximately 150,000 people in Sedgwick County who would qualify for Phase 2. The county was allocated fewer than 6,000 doses in the past week, according to the KDHE.

Maheux said Johnson County has about 200,000 people in Phase 2, but gets less than 7,000 doses a week. With too few doses to meet the demand, health officials have to sub-prioritize who gets shots.

Watson called Johnson County’s vaccine allocation “just a spit in the bucket.” In the Wichita area teleconference, he referred to the roll-out as “a trickle” of vaccines.

Kenny Wilk, representing the University of Kansas Health System, said during the KC metro hospital report that health care workers “were very fortunate and feel blessed” to be vaccinated in the first phase.

“Solid process behind that to make sure our people are available to care for the sick,” Wilk said. “We are seeing a really positive outcome of that. To put that in perspective, we have cut by about two-thirds the number of people that were either infected or quarantined of our staff members.”

“We believe that that is a direct correlation to the vaccine.”

The decision to vaccinate health care workers in Phase 1 was criticized on Tuesday by state Sen. Mark Steffen, a Hutchinson Republican, the Associated Press reported. Steffen is a physician who has voiced doubts about the effectiveness of wearing masks.

“If you give it to a bunch of health care workers and you’re just protecting them from flu symptoms, rather than giving it to people who could save their life, that’s questionable,” Steffen said.

The KDHE has reported 91 clusters at health care facilities, with those outbreaks accounting for 1,043 cases, 49 hospitalizations and 21 deaths.

“There’s one problem with the vaccine, and that is there’s too little of it,” Norman said.

The state will get about 45,000 doses this week, Norman said. That is about 1% of the nation’s total vaccine supply, and Kansas is about 1% of the nation’s population.

“Phase 2, which is going to be the largest number of people in any particular phase, it is going to take quite a number of weeks at that level of vaccine distribution from the feds to get through it,” he said.

Marci Nielson, who advises the governor on the pandemic response, said the 45,000 number includes both first and second doses.

Since patients need two shots of a vaccine about three weeks apart, the figure does not translate to 45,000 patients being fully inoculated each week. At that rate, it would take about 22 weeks just to get enough first doses for everyone in Phase 2.

“We at the state are of course as frustrated as everybody else is that the vaccine roll-out has been slow,” Nielson said during the Wichita regional hospital call. “We are frustrated that there isn’t enough vaccine.”

Seth Konkel, a former Sedgwick County public health worker who now advises the state government on the vaccine roll-out, said local officials are telling him “constantly that we need more, we’re ready for more, we want more. So I think health departments have got a good plan and are getting it out the door, so we’re just waiting for that increase in vaccine production.”

Norman said he looks forward to mass vaccination clinics once more vaccine doses are available. That likely won’t happen until the federal government has a bigger supply line with additional manufacturers, he said.

“I don’t have any reason for optimism that there is going to be any uptick in the number of doses,” Norman said of the current situation. “I wish I could be more upbeat than that about it.”