COVID-19 in Kansas, 28Oct2020
Kansas COVID-19 Updates
Hello! Today we’ll talk about the most recent White House Coronavirus Task Force (abbreviated WHCTF) report. To begin, the summary table is provided below. You can see that there’s a lot of red across multiple metrics, indicating that things are not going well.
Testing
For testing, we have consistently been below the national average, but we follow the national trend well. When testing goes up nationally, it goes up for Kansas too (exception being the week of 22Sep).
But despite doing less testing in the most recent week, our percent positivity rate is much higher than last week and there’s a sharp increase over where we were at the beginning of October. In fact, the percent positive rate is higher than it has ever been for Kansas.
The percent positive rate should be considered alongside the case rate (next section). The latter tells us how much disease is circulating. The percent positive rate tells us whether that case rate is more or less likely to be an under count. The higher the percent positive rate, the more likely the case rate is under-representing the situation on the ground. With the most recent month’s trends, it would seem that we aren’t testing widely enough.
Cases
The next graph looks at how the Kansas case rate (blue line), adjusted for population, has trended over time compared to the national average (red line).
We were below average for case rate (a good thing) until mid August. Since then, we’ve been well above the national trend. At present our rate is 47% higher than the national average. The next graph looks at how the state is doing in terms of counties of concern. The WHCTF defines these counties based on recent case rates, and severity ranges from red (most intense) to yellow. There are color classes for counties that aren’t on the list (shades of green) to represent low case rates. The black line below is the total of all counties on the WHCTF list (red, orange and yellow).
The number of counties in the orange and yellow zone has stayed relatively consistent over the past month. But the number of counties on the red list has more than doubled since 22Sep.
Looking a bit deeper, here’s how the 7-day case rate per 100,000 residents compares across different county types for the state of Kansas. You can your local county’s classification for this graph by referring to this map. The statewide average for the graph below is shown in the black line.
Frontier counties still have the highest case rate, as has been the case for the last month. However, rural counties are right behind them. Urban counties have also increased in the last two weeks. Thankfully, we’re seeing some decreases in semi-urban and densely-settled rural counties.
Hospitalizations
The graph below shows how average daily hospital admissions reported to the WHCTF have trended over time for Kansas. The gray line shows how many Kansas hospitals have reported into the system (right y-axis), staying at or near 90% for the last several weeks.
Confirmed COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen in a big way since 20Sep, but decreased slightly in the most recent week. These patients have already been tested positive for COVID-19 prior to admission. The suspected COVID-19 patient hospital admissions are those whose test results are pending at the time of admission, but hospitals are treating them as COVID-19 patients in the meantime. If we add these two together to get a better sense of the demand for treatment and personal protective equipment (PPE), the average daily number of admissions is 131 this week, an improvement over 143 last week.
Speaking of PPE, the WHCTF is now including a new graph that tells us how well stocked Kansas hospitals are. The majority of Kansas hospitals have at least 4-6 days worth of supplies on hand. That’s a good thing.
We’ll want to pay attention to this as cases increase. As cases increase, hospitalizations tend to follow. That will put increased demand on a hospital’s supply of PPE.
Deaths
The next graph looks at how the Kansas death rate, adjusted for population, compares to the national average over time. Unfortunately, we really aren’t doing well for this metric.
Remember how for case rate I mentioned that we were below national average until 23Aug? We were below the national average for death rate until the week of 20Sep. So there’s about a 4 week delay between when cases surge versus when deaths surge for Kansas. At present, the death rate in Kansas is more than twice as high as the national average.
If we look a bit closer at what’s happening in Kansas across counties of different population density, we see that the death rate is substantially worse for frontier counties compared to the rest of the state. The death rate for rural counties is now above the state average too. The counties that fit into these two categories (frontier and rural) make up 70 of the state’s 105 counties, but 12.7% of the state’s population.
References
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7277089-Kansas-10-25.html
https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/160/COVID-19-in-Kansas
http://www.ipsr.ku.edu/ksdata/ksah/population/popden2.pdf
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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.