After post-Christmas spike, January was a better month for COVID in Kansas and Wichita

Following a spike in coronavirus indicators after Christmas, data show Kansas and Wichita both had significant improvement over the past month. The pandemic trends improved in January despite a slow rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.

Metrics for the positive test rate, new cases, deaths per capita and hospital capacity all improved since the holiday season ended.

The pandemic indicators in Kansas are “very much improving numbers,” said Dr. Lee Norman, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, during a Tuesday media briefing hosted by the University of Kansas Health System.

“Statewide, the new cases are dropping, in some situations rather dramatically,” Norman said. “Hospitalizations are dropping. The number of deaths per day are dropping. Obviously, we’re never satisfied until we get down to zero, so we still have a ways to go.”

This past weekend had about 650 new cases a day, compared to 2,000 to 3,000 new cases each day a month or two ago, he said. Now, hospitals have more “breathing room,” and immunizations of medical workers means there’s no longer a “staff crunch.”

Kansas reported 48,923 new cases of COVID-19 between the first day of January and the first day of February, along with 1,586 new hospitalizations, 449 more ICU admissions and 930 deaths. Sedgwick County 9,662 new cases, 318 more hospitalizations, 106 ICU admissions and 131 new deaths in January, according to KDHE numbers.

Kansas as a whole, as well as many of its 105 counties, experienced a week-over-week spike in new cases and the positive test rate the week after Christmas and then again the week after New Year’s Day. Since then, trends for those two indicators have improved statewide and in most counties, KDHE data show.

Statewide, the per-capita rate of new cases dropped by 64% in January, from 516.4 per 100,000 for the week of Jan. 3 to 187.1 per 100,000 for week of Jan. 24. The drop was 65% in Sedgwick County, which went from 612 per 100,000 to 214 per 100,000, according to the state’s data.

Despite the improvement in the case rates, both Sedgwick County and Kansas as a whole remain in the red zone of the White House COVID-19 Task Force. The threshold is set at 100 per 100,000.

The statewide positive test rate was 11.37% the week of Jan. 3. It was 6.22% for the week of Jan. 24. In Sedgwick County, the positive test rate went from 12.59% to 9.05%.

Sedgwick County moved from the red zone to the orange zone, and Kansas moved from the red zone to the yellow zone. The White House’s orange zone, which is between yellow and orange, ranges from 8% to 10%.

State officials caution that the most recent week of data may be incomplete. Last week’s case rates will likely increase some in future updates as lagging test results are reported. Positive test rates could increase or decrease slightly.

Fewer new cases of COVID-19 in the past month have eased the pressure on hospitals, but ICU capacity remains strained across the region.

The Sedgwick County Health Department upgraded the hospital status from “critical” to “cautious” for the first time since late October. From Jan. 4 to Monday, Wichita hospitals experienced a 31% drop in total COVID-19 patients and a 34% drop in COVID patients in ICUs.

However, the health department reports zero available ICU beds at Wesley Medical Center and Ascension Via Christi St. Francis.

The Kansas Hospital Association report show that, across the south-central region, availability for adult, staffed ICU beds improved from 11% to 19% between Jan. 4 and Tuesday. Both numbers are in the White House’s red zone.

In the same time span, the south-central region had a 23% drop in total hospitalizations for confirmed or suspected COVID-19 and a 40% drop in ICU beds used by those patients.

In Kansas as a whole, the hospital association reported an increase of 22% ICU availability to 30%, which is in the White House’s gray zone. Total COVID hospitalizations decreased by 31% and the number in ICUs decreased by 43.

The rate of new deaths has also fallen. Kansas started off the new year with the highest rate of reported deaths in the country, according to data from the White House COVID-19 Task Force and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kansas ended the month with the 24th-highest rate in the country. The state’s death rate dropped by more than 50%, from 12.8 to 6.2 new deaths per 100,000 people. The current number is still three times the red zone threshold.

Kansas had 15 counties among the 100 worst death rates in the country, including two in the top 10, at the start of January. At the start of February, there were six Kansas counties in the top 100 and none in the top 10.

”The numbers speak for themselves — things are turning around and heading in the correct direction,” said Seth Konkel, a Kansas public health official, during a Tuesday teleconference for the regional hospitals.

“I think it’s definitely been a testament to people taking social distance, taking masks and taking other things to heart,” Konkel said. “I don’t think we can stop that. We have seen this before where we would have a dip, and then everybody gets comfortable: ‘Eh, it’s gone, it’s not as big a deal anymore.’ And then we get a little bit lax in our precautions. ... We’re nowhere where we need to be for that vaccination to be effective for the entire community, and therefore those precautions are going to have to continue.”

Vaccinations

Despite the improvement in pandemic indicators, the vaccine rollout has remained slow amid supply shortages.

As the public health focus has turned to vaccinations, limited data is available to the public. Officials have often pointed to questionable accuracy in the statistics, and holes in the reporting make it difficult to view the whole picture.

When nationwide CDC data first came out in early January on doses administered per capita, Kansas was ranked last. Health officials blamed it on a reporting lag, saying some distributors had not been fully trained on how to report the shots to the government.

As the month progressed, state officials lauded an upgrade to the “top tier” of the CDC’s report. However, 44 of 50 states were considered in the top tier, and Kansas still ranked in the bottom half of the group. Officials have said the emphasis has been on getting shots in arms and not on immediate reporting to the government, suggesting there have been many more doses administered than what the data show.

As of Wednesday, the CDC’s data show Kansas with the 47th-worst state for the rate of doses administered compared to population. The CDC reports 470,800 doses have been distributed to the state, but only 241,156 have been administered.

The KDHE’s data from Wednesday reported 413,350 doses have been distributed and 249,724 have been administered.

The KDHE’s report for individual counties only shows the number of doses distributed to each county in the current week. It does not show how many total doses each county has received or administered.

The Sedgwick County Health Department has administered 17,477 total doses as of Wednesday, but numbers are not reported for additional providers in the county.

This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 4:31 PM.