How’s Kansas doing with social distancing? Not very well, data say
As the coronavirus continues to spread, Kansas isn’t doing a good enough job social distancing to flatten the curve, data show.
Human mobility company Unacast uses anonymous data from cellphones to determine the average distance people are traveling during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the average distance they traveled prior to the outbreak. The data is entered into a color-coded map that is updated daily.
Kansas earned a D ranking. The United States as a whole garnered a C, as of Monday morning.
From February 24 to March 11, Kansas saw little change in how often people were traveling in the state, data show. On some occasions, movement actually increased with March 12 seeing a 12% jump in average distance traveled. At that point, Kansas had one confirmed case of coronavirus, according to Unacast.
More cases popped over the next couple days and Kansas saw as much as a 12% decrease in travel on March 14 before spiking again on March 16 to 3% more travel than before the pandemic hit.
By March 16, Kansas had 11 confirmed cases of COVID-19, data show. The next day, Gov. Laura Kelly closed Kansas schools for the rest of the year.
As more cases began to accumulate, Kansas saw a drop off in travel, falling to 34% less travel than usual on March 21. It climbed to only 17% less travel by March 24.
Of course, some counties are doing better than others. Elk, Kearny, Johnson, Wilson and Doniphan rank best in the state with Elk, Kearny and Johnson all garnering A ratings based on March 25 data.
Cheyenne, Ellsworth, Greely, Chase and Lincoln counties ranked worst, all scoring Fs for that Wednesday .
Sedgwick County, home to Wichita, and Shawnee County, home to Topeka, both earned a B rating based on March 26 travel, data show.
As of Sunday, Kansas had 319 confirmed cases of coronavirus and six deaths, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
A temporary statewide stay home order that went into effect Monday and will be in place until at least April 19.
Clarification: This article has been updated to reflect the dates under which the counties were scored for their travel.
This story was originally published March 30, 2020 at 11:27 AM with the headline "How’s Kansas doing with social distancing? Not very well, data say."