After a dip following Thanksgiving, KC metro again adds more than 1,000 COVID-19 cases
After a drop in new COVID-19 cases over the past six days, the Kansas City metropolitan area added more than 1,000 COVID-19 cases.
For five consecutive days, the metro had added less than 1,000 new cases.
But on Thursday, the area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas gained 1,093 cases for a total of 85,170 to date.
The seven-day average for new cases sits at 872. One week ago, the average was 1,098. Two weeks ago, it was 1,172.
Seven more deaths were reported. Two were in Kansas City, one was in Jackson County, one was in Johnson County and three were in Wyandotte County, raising the metro’s total to 1,056.
The University of Kansas Health System had 89 patients being treated for the virus, a drop from 100 on Wednesday. Of the 89, 46 are in the intensive are unit with 28 on ventilators.
“I think we’re optimistic,” said Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control. “We know that that infection curve was still pretty steep if you look around the Kansas City area since Oct. 26 or so, and only recently did it start going down. We don’t know if that’s a consequence of less testing or if that’s truly less cases. And we know that the hospitalizations will lag behind that by about 10 to 14 days so hopefully we can keep pushing those acute infections down.”
On Thursday, Missouri confirmed 309,368 cases including 4,102 deaths. There were 2,758 hospitalizations and 21% of hospital ICU beds were remaining. The seven-day positive test rate was 20.4%.
As the risk of COVID-19 rises to a “historic high,” the White House Coronavirus Task Force urged Missouri to strengthen its COVID-19 public health orders.
Gov. Mike Parson recently reiterated his opposition to a statewide mask mandate, despite a surge in new cases.
Both Kansas and Missouri remain in the task force’s red zone due to the number of cases and positivity rates.
Kansas reported 162,061 cases including 1,679 deaths. There were 854 hospitalizations and 39% of hospital ICU beds were available. The monthly positive test rate was 17.1%.
Across the country, more than 13.9 million people have contracted the virus and 274,577 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
