COVID-19 in Kansas, 18Nov2020
Kansas COVID-19 Updates
Good evening! In today’s post, we’ll focus on the most recent White House Coronavirus Task Force (WHCTF) report. The link to view the entire document is in the references section of this post. First, let’s begin with the summary table that compares how Kansas is doing relative to last week and compared to the region and nation.
The first takeaway is look at how red this table is. This is the first time I’ve seen the US column all shaded in red like this and this is the first time that the national percent positive rate is in the red zone. We are not in a good place as a state or as a nation for this pandemic.
Here are the WHCTF’s messages for the public in Kansas:
With these recommendations, I would strongly caution against large family gatherings for Thanksgiving. We’ve had really good news recently regarding vaccine development and that provides necessary hope in this dark time. That hope brings the reassurance that this pandemic *will end.* We need to sit this Thanksgiving out, as much as possible, to protect our loved ones who live outside of our immediate households. With the successful development of these vaccines, there’s a very good chance that we can have a Thanksgiving next year that feels far more “normal.”
Testing
The test rate per population has been increasing steadily on a national level since late June, but it increased more sharply in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the test rate for the state of Kansas declined significantly. At this point the test rate in Kansas is 30% less than last week and 53% less than the national average. Keep in mind, this graph is only considering PCR test data. The rapid antigen test is not included in these numbers. So it is possible that Kansas is making up this deficit through antigen testing to some degree.
Kansas saw a continued, sharp rise in its percent positive rate in the past week. The percent positive rate in the most recent week sits at about 23% for the state and that is 126% higher than the national average. Remember, percent positivity is considered alongside case rate to estimate how much the case rate we currently detect might be an under count of reality. The greater that number above 5%, the more likely we are missing cases. On a national level, this is the first time that the US rate has been in the red zone (>10%) since the WHCTF began producing these reports on 23Jun. It is, in fact, the highest it has ever been.
The graph below shows how each county in Kansas is doing with respect to percent positive rate in the most recent week. Red is bad, green is good.
Cases
The map below shows the overall picture for the nation. You can see that much of the country is colored in red, and the midwestern and plains states are dark red.
Next, let’s consider now case rate per 100,000 people has trended over time for Kansas compared to the US. If you look at the red line’s peak around 21-28Jul, that was the summer surge that impacted the southern half of the US. We are well above that case rate now. Kansas has been above the national average since 18Aug. But things really took off starting the week of 27Oct and cases have grown dramatically, by 215% since late October.
The number of red counties has leveled off. The map below this graph shows you where those counties are located.
This next graph is based on data from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, showing how case rates are changing depending on county population density. You can check to see how your county is classified here.
What you’ll see is that the state (black line) is showing exponential growth of case rate. The problem with exponential growth is that everything looks okay until it is not okay. And then it is really, really not okay anymore. This is a dangerous spot to be because there is so much momentum for the virus in the community and we have effectively lost control of the pandemic. Because of the way that infectious diseases work, the people who will be reported as cases next week were exposed this week. The people who need hospital admission next week were exposed two weeks ago. And the people who die next week were exposed three weeks ago. So even if we implement some sort of intervention like a mask mandate or a large gathering ban, or even a lockdown, the disease is already out there and the events are already in motion for the outcomes we will see in the next 2-3 weeks. But it is really vital that we take whatever steps we can to limit transmission as quickly as possible as an investment with delayed return. Our hospitals are already strained. You probably learned in high school physics that an object in motion will stay in motion until acted upon by an external force. This pandemic is an object in motion right now. It won’t stop on its own, if we keep doing what we are doing. We have to interrupt opportunities for transmission to stop this skyrocketing increase. We have to be the external force through our actions.
Hospitalizations
There’s a new data visualization in the WHCTF report that shows how hospitalizations break down by age groups. For this graph, the purple diamonds correspond to the right y-axis and describe how many Kansas hospitals are reporting into the system. This number has held pretty steady since the middle of September. The bars represent the total number of patients admitted with confirmed COVID-19 illness or suspected illness (i.e. their lab results are pending at the time of admission). The colors correspond to different age groups with the darker shade of a given color representing confirmed cases for that age group and the pale shade represents suspected cases for that age group. So take a look and see what you see in the data. I’ll offer the things I see below the graph.
Hospitalizations are about twice as high now as they were at the beginning of October. The largest age group being hospitalized is those over the age of 70 but there is a second large group that is 40-69. The number of suspected COVID-19 admissions is considerably larger now for the various age groups than in the past. That makes me wonder if our testing infrastructure is getting overwhelmed, even with the arrival of the antigen test.
A bright spot is that many Kansas hospitals have at least a month’s worth of PPE on hand. That doesn’t solve all of the problems that our healthcare infrastructure is facing right now. But at least they are well supplied.
Deaths
The death rate is increasing in the US, but has not yet reached the same level as we saw during the height of the summer surge. Thankfully, we saw the death rate decrease in Kansas, but that seems to be a trend of sorts for the state. I’m not entirely sure why we see this wide variability in the death rate from week to week. On the whole, though, it appears that the death rate is trending up over time compared to where we were in mid-September.
Again, remember that we have the power to prevent the deaths that are possible three weeks from now.
Take care, I’ll be back on Friday with analysis of data from the state of Kansas.
References
The WHCTF report for Kansas was kindly provided by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment through an open records request and then uploaded to the Center for Public Integrity’s collection of the WHCTF reports for all 50 states. https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20407643-kansas-11_15_20
https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/160/COVID-19-in-Kansas
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My Ph.D. is in Medical Microbiology and Immunology. I've worked at places like Creighton University, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and Mercer University School of Medicine. All thoughts are my professional opinion and should not be considered medical advice.