Kansas City metro surpasses 5,000 coronavirus cases, records 200th death
The Kansas City metropolitan area surpassed 5,000 coronavirus cases on Monday and has recorded 200 deaths.
Seventy-three new cases were reported Monday.
The number of new cases rose by 90 on Friday, 141 on Saturday and 58 on Sunday.
The area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas, has a total of 5,048 cases.
The metro is seeing an increase in the rate of new cases, said David Wild, vice president of performance improvement at the University of Kansas Health System.
“That is sort of contradictory to the number of patients that we see in the hospital,” he said.
The number of patients being treated at the health system has decreased in recent weeks.
Eleven were hospitalized as of Monday morning.
Wild attributed the decline to less outbreaks at nursing facilities and to younger people who are typically hospitalized for a shorter amount of time because they have fewer underlying conditions.
Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control at the health system, said there has not been a significant change in the strain of COVID-19.
“The virus is still out there,” he said, adding that 30% to 45% of people who have it are asymptomatic.
The overall positive rate was 4.01% in Kansas City, 3.81% in Jackson County, 2.3% in Clay County, 3.9% in Johnson County and 15.7% in Wyandotte County. Platte County does not provide this data.
One new death was reported, in Johnson County, raising the total number of deaths in the metro to 200.
On Monday, Missouri said 14,734 cases had been reported. That included 657 hospitalizations and 819 deaths.
Kansas reported 10,650 cases. That included 936 hospitalizations and 236 deaths.
Across the U.S., more than 1.9 million people have contracted the virus and more than 110,000 people have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
