KC area adds more than 175 cases as Missouri enters fourth day without new COVID data
The Kansas City metropolitan area added more than 175 new COVID-19 cases, however Missouri’s reporting system was still down as of 3 p.m. Wednesday.
The area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas, gained 176 coronavirus cases for a total of 44,265 to date.
However updated figures for the jurisdictions in Missouri were not available as the state works on fixing its dashboards, which have been under maintenance since Sunday after an “extract error” was discovered.
Despite flat figures for Missouri the past four days, the metro’s seven-day average for new daily cases remains above 300 at 309. It was 349 at the beginning of the month.
The new cases reported Wednesday came from Johnson County, where 110 new cases were confirmed, and Wyandotte County, which had 66.
Four new deaths were also reported. Three were in Johnson County and one was in Wyandotte County, raising the metro’s total to 653.
The University of Kansas Health System reported its hospital was treating 26 patients for the virus, down four from Tuesday.
Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control, said managing the virus through herd immunity “is not the way to go at this point.”
“Looking at going towards herd immunity right now without vaccination is a very dangerous prospect,” Hawkinson said during a daily briefing hosted by the health system.
Missouri has at least 144,230 cases to date, including 2,422 deaths. The last available positive test rate was 14%.
Kansas has reported 69,155 cases, including 838 deaths. There have been a total of 3,309 hospitalizations and there are 241 active clusters, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Across the country, more than 7.8 million people have contracted the virus and 216,323 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
