COVID-19 numbers in Kansas and Missouri: Good news in May, but doctors offer warning
The positive test rate for COVID-19 decreased in May in Kansas and Missouri as both the states began reopening.
On May 1 in Missouri, the seven-day average for positive cases was 9.4%. By the end of the month, it had dropped to 3.6%.
In Missouri it appears that decrease is, at least in part, a result of more testing. During the first week of May, about 24,850 tests were conducted. More than 44,000 tests were administered in the fourth week of the month.
Kansas started May with 12.8% of its tests returning with a positive result. On May 31, 3.5% were positive.
However the reason for the decline is less clear as testing did not dramatically increase in Kansas. During the first week of May, roughly 17,000 tests were conducted. That rose to about 18,800 during the fourth week of the month.
Preliminary data from June shows both states at an average of about 4%.
Jennifer Tolbert, a director of state health reform at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said ideally the positive test rate should be 3% or lower. The number can provide an idea of who is able to obtain a test in a given area.
In interviews, Tolbert, along with Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Lee Norman, Kansas Health Institute Senior Analyst Charles Hunt and Enid Schatz the chair of the University of Missouri’s Public Health department, pointed to the positive test rate as a key metric for tracking the disease, along with the rate of new cases and the number of hospitalizations.
The measures can help officials and the public make decisions as states reopen.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services said some numbers continue to fluctuate as they receive new testing results from local health departments and labs.
New cases
The number of new cases also declined during May in Kansas and Missouri.
Kansas went from a seven-day average of 247 in the first week of the month to 131 in the final week.
Missouri went from 286 to 246.
While the cumulative number of cases will continue to rise until a vaccine is developed and distributed, a decrease in the number of new cases indicates the virus is spreading more slowly.
Hospitalizations
The number of daily hospitalizations declined in Missouri from 944 on May 1 to 548 on May 31. However, preliminary information from June shows spikes of up to 651.
Additionally, not all of the hospitals in the state submit daily updates to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
Kansas does not provide the number of daily hospitalizations. On the last three days of May, the number of new hospital admissions went from seven to three. However there have been at least two days so far this month that recorded 10 new admissions, according to the most recently available data.
Physicians at the University of Kansas Health System said Thursday that they had 19 patients being treated for COVID-19, an increase of one from Wednesday. Seven of the 19 are in the intensive care unit and of those, six require ventilators.
Doctors at the health system have recently expressed concern as their low of 10 patients began to increase. They urged people to continue practicing social distancing and wearing masks in public.
