Kansas City metro adds more than 400 new COVID-19 cases and one death Thursday
The Kansas City metropolitan area added more than 400 new COVID-19 cases and one more death Thursday.
The area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas gained 423 new cases for a total of 29,332 to date.
The two-week positive test rate was 12.4% in Kansas City and 16.55% in Jackson County.
The overall positive test rate was 8.29% in Clay County, 8.92% in Platte County, 7.7% in Johnson County and 18.4% in Wyandotte County.
There was one death in Jackson County, raising the metro’s total to 396.
The seven-day rolling average for new cases was 369. One week ago, it was 342. Two weeks ago, it was 383.
“As we continue to move through this, we are going to continue to see variations probably from day to day, whether that’s because of data reporting, because of slow data results or it’s the weekend or one thing or another,” said Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control at the University of Kansas Health System.
“So people just have to understand there will be variations in the amount of cases every day. Hopefully we want to overall bring that 10 or 14 or 7 day rolling average down as low as possible.”
Hawkinson said Thursday that the health system is treating 29 patients for the virus, up five from Wednesday. Of those 29, 10 are in the intensive care unit with five on ventilators.
“We want as few people in the hospital but there will be variations,” he said.
On Thursday, Missouri confirmed 79,574 cases including 1,450 deaths. The seven day positive test rate was 12.1%. The overall positive test rate was 8.4%.
Kansas updates its numbers Monday, Wednesday and Friday. As of Wednesday, Kansas reported 39,937 cases including 437 deaths. The overall positive test rate was 10.1%.
Across the U.S., more than 5.8 million people have contracted the virus and 180,249 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
