COVID cases, test positivity, death trends improve in Wichita as hospitalizations rise
Most coronavirus pandemic indicators show improvement in both the Wichita area and Kansas as a whole.
Despite the improvement, community spread of COVID-19 remains “substantial” in Sedgwick County and “moderate” statewide, according to Monday’s report from the White House task force, using data as of Sunday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Locally and statewide, all major indicators except for hospital admissions improved in the past week compared to the previous week.
In Sedgwick County, the weekly rate of new cases dropped to 57 per 100,000 people, down from 66 as of May 9 statistics; the new death rate fell from 1.9 to 0.6 per 100,000. The positive test rate is back below 5%, dropping from 5.4% to 4.7% in one week.
Meanwhile, the county’s hospitals went from 32 confirmed COVID admissions and 118 suspected COVID admission two weeks ago to 37 confirmed and 140 suspected COVID admissions over the past week, the report said. Local ICU capacity remained unchanged, at 89% of staffed adult ICU beds occupied, which is a red zone indicator by national standards.
The Sedgwick County Health Department dashboard did not have an updated hospital status as of early Monday afternoon.
Kansas as a whole dropped from 44 to 35 new cases per 100,000 people, which is the eighth-best case rate of any state in the country, the White House report with CDC numbers shows. The death rate dropped from 1.2 to 0.8 per 100,000, which was ranked 18th-lowest among the states. The statewide positive test rate dropped from 4.1% to 3.6%, ranking 19th.
Kansas hospitals went from 169 confirmed and 202 suspected COVID patient two weeks ago to 155 confirmed and 246 suspected COVID patients in the past week. The confirmed COVID hospitalization rate compared to inpatient beds is the third-best in of any state.
Of the 155 confirmed COVID hospital admissions in the past week, five were children, three were ages 18-29, 14 were ages 30-39, 31 were ages 40-49, 23 were ages 50-59, 35 were ages 60-69, 41 were 70 years old or older, and three patients did not have age data reported
The national report does not contain information on whether patients were vaccinated or not. Health officials in Wichita and Kansas have said very few of their new COVID-19 patients were fully vaccinated.
Vaccination statistics show a continued drop in demand for first-dose shots. Kansas is tied for the ninth-worst rate of people initiating vaccination in the last week. The 30% drop week-over-week in first and second doses administered in Kansas was the sixth-worst of all states.
The national report showed Kansas had 25,690 more people get at least one dose in the past week, raising the state’s first-dose vaccination rate from 43.8% to 44.6% of the population.
There were 43,202 more people who got fully vaccinated, raising the fully vaccinated rate from 34.9% to 36.4% of the state. Kansas ranks 28th in the country for fully vaccinated population.
In Sedgwick County, an additional 5,635 residents were fully vaccinated in the past week, raising the share of the local population from 28.5% to 29.6%. Sedgwick County ranks No. 65 of 105 counties in Kansas. County-level first-dose vaccination rates are not available in national data.
COVID data from KDHE
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment on Monday reported pandemic totals of 312,073 confirmed and probable cases, 10,510 hospitalizations, 2,916 ICU admissions and 5,040 deaths. Over the weekend, there were 368 new cases, 22 new hospitalizations, three new ICU admissions and two new deaths.
In Sedgwick County, according to the KDHE, there have been 56,838 cases, 1,791 hospitalizations, 756 ICU admissions and 756 deaths. Since Friday, there were 68 new cases, seven new hospitalizations, one new ICU admission and zero new deaths.
The KDHE has confirmed 971 variant cases across the state, and Greenwood County is now the 52nd county to have a confirmed variant case. The United Kingdom and Brazil variants are the most dominant in Kansas, though state officials have also reported cases with virus strains originating in California, New York, South Africa and India.
The most recent proportion estimates from the CDC show the United Kindgom variant accounted for about 72% of all samples tested in the Kansas-Missouri-Nebraska-Iowa region. The Brazil variant was the second-largest lineage, at about 7% of all specimens collected.
The UK variant has 705 cases in Kansas, an increase of 41 over the weekend. There were three new cases of the Brazil variant, raising the total to 149. There was also one new case of a New York variant.
Sedgwick County continues to have the most variant cases in the state at 404 total. The eight new UK cases since Friday raises the county UK total to 262, and the two new Brazilian cases put that strain’s total at 120.
Variant cases are likely under-reported because not all COVID-19 cases undergo genomic sequencing to determine the strain.
This story was originally published May 17, 2021 at 2:34 PM.