590 new COVID cases, 40,237 vaccine doses administered in Kansas over the weekend

Kansas public health officials administered many more COVID-19 vaccine doses over the weekend than the number of new coronavirus disease cases statewide.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported 590 new cases of COVID-19 between Friday and Monday, compared to 40,237 vaccine doses administered.

As of Monday, the KDHE reported that the state has now had pandemic totals of 296,451 confirmed and probable cases, 9,411 hospitalizations and 4,816 deaths. The increase from Friday to Monday was 590 new cases, 24 new hospitalizations and four new deaths.

Sedgwick County, according to the KDHE, has now had 54,050 cases and 712 deaths. Monday’s report contained 88 new cases and no new deaths.

Approximately 10.2% of Kansans have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the past year.

About 16% of Kansans have received a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in the past three months, while about 8% of Kansans have been fully vaccinated.

As of Monday, the KDHE has had 698,670 total doses reported as administered out of 1,020,380 distributed to Kansas. An additional 4,440 doses were distributed to the state over the weekend.

There have been 465,622 total first shots reported as administered, which was an increase of 26,495 since Friday. The second shot total was 232,986, which was up 13,680 over the weekend.

The KDHE has allocated 11,700 first doses to Sedgwick County this week.

The Sedgwick County Health Department has given out 59,367 total shots, with 19,646 people fully vaccinated. Over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the health department administered 3,254 first doses and had 1,501 people fully vaccinated.

Those numbers do not include vaccinations from other providers, such as hospitals and pharmacies.

Kansas continues to have a low national ranking for doses administered per capita, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Kansas ranks No. 46 out of 50 states, above Texas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.

Indicators for coronavirus spread in Kansas continue to improve. Sunday’s report from the White House COVID-19 Task Force showed the Kansas case rate in the orange zone. The 75 new cases per 100,000 people was the eighth-best weekly rate in the country. The state’s positive test rate of 3.8% ranked as the 23rd-best.

Despite the improvement, experts continue to recommend the continuation of health guidelines, including wearing masks and social distancing. Vaccinations in high-risk populations are not enough to offer community-wide protection.

“There’s always the concern that we sort of see the current trends, which are flat ... turn around and go back up,” said Dr. David Wild, vice president of performance improvement at The University of Kansas Health System, during a hospital media briefing on Monday. “I think that’s probably the biggest concern, is that in the unvaccinated population, we start to see a change. And when we know that that is still by far the majority of the population in our community, we still really are not out of the woods.”