KC metro adds more than 1,100 COVID-19 cases as Missouri’s reporting system is fixed
The Kansas City metropolitan area reported more than 1,100 new COVID-19 cases Thursday as Missouri’s reporting system was restored after being down for four days.
The area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas, gained 1,128 coronavirus cases for a total of 45,393 to date.
After a spike in cases was reported Saturday in Missouri, the state said their COVID-19 reporting system was experiencing a “database extract error.”
The dashboards were not updated until early Wednesday evening.
Bert Malone, board member of the Missouri Public Health Association, said having up-to-date data was critical.
“It’s incredibly frustrating for regional and local public health officials to try to work an epidemic when you don’t have reliable data,” Malone said.
The seven-day average for new cases in the metro now sits at 417. It was 349 at the beginning of the month.
Areas within the metro in Missouri have seen increasing positive test rates.
On Oct. 1, the rate was 12.06% in Kansas City, 10.05% in Jackson County, 10.7% in Clay County and 15.04% in Platte County.
The positive test rate Thursday was 15.02% in Kansas City, 18.05% in Jackson County, 17.19% in Clay County and 16.99% in Platte County, according to figures from the state of Missouri.
The two-week positive test rate, excluding repeat testing, was 10.8% in Johnson County.
The overall rate was 17.3% in Wyandotte County.
A total of 645 people have died from the virus in the metro area, according to updated figures from the state of Missouri.
The University of Kansas Health System said 27 patients were hospitalized for the virus, up one from Wednesday. Of the 27, seven are on ventilators.
Steve Stites, chief medical officer, encouraged people to follow the pillars of infection control.
“Wearing a mask is an act of kindness and generosity to everyone else,” he said. “It protects you and it really protects everyone around you.”
On Thursday, Missouri reported 150,554 cases including 2,442 deaths. People age 80 or older account for 1,205 of the deaths. The positive test rate was 17.9%.
Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Lee Norman said during a news conference Wednesday that the state’s numbers were getting worse.
Kansas has at least 69,155 cases including 838 deaths. People age 75 or older make up 513 of the deaths. There have been a total of 3,309 hospitalizations and there are 241 active clusters, according to KDHE.
Across the country, more than 7.9 million people have contracted the virus and 217,374 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
