COVID-19 cases in KC metro continue to climb; doctors warn about lax precautions
The Kansas City metropolitan area has recorded more than 5,700 coronavirus cases, according to the latest figures.
The area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas has seen 5,745 cases, including 205 deaths.
The metro has added 280 cases since Friday, when there were 5,465 cases.
The positive test rate was 4.34% in Kansas City, 4.83% in Jackson County, 2.7% in Clay County, 3.8% in Johnson County and 15.5% in Wyandotte County. Platte County does not provide this figure.
Though the number of cases continues to rise in the metro area and beyond, doctors at the University of Kansas Health System said many people have become lax about preventing the spread of the virus.
Psychologist Greg Nawalanic said he has noticed “a strange flip” in the past two weeks.
“No real data or facts around COVID have changed. I think people hit kind of a point where they said, and I’ve heard people actually say this, ‘I did what I was supposed to do. I did enough and this is enough and I’m going back out.’ And so it’s like there’s just this disregard for the proverbial wolf at the door,” he said during a briefing with the health system.
“If you went to go pickup curbside, if you didn’t have a mask two weeks ago, you were the pariah ... Now I go pick things up and I’ve got my mask on and people are clumped together, they’re not wearing masks and they look at me like I’m the goofball for still wearing the mask. And it’s really an interesting situation to observe how people can create their own psychological reality around the threat.”
Physicians encouraged the public to engage in social distancing and good hand hygiene.
Missouri reported 16,189 cases Monday, including 612 people hospitalized and 880 deaths.
Kansas confirmed 11,419 cases, including a total of 988 hospitalizations and 245 deaths.
Nationwide, more than 2.1 million people have contracted the virus and more than 116,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
