Kansas City area sees jump in COVID-19 hospitalizations with patients as young as 25
Hospital officials from around the Kansas City metro reported an uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations and said many of the patients are younger in age.
The University of Kansas Health System had 13 patients admitted for the virus, ranging in age from 25 to 90.
The 25-year-old did not have any underlying health conditions, and required an ECMO lung machine which is used for “the sickest of the sick,” chief medical officer Steve Stites said.
“But to go on ECMO means your lungs have to really be failing and for that to be true and to be 25 and previously healthy, that’s just bad news,” Stites said. “That’s what COVID-19 does.”
Health officials from around the metro joined Stites Wednesday on the health system’s daily briefing.
Advent Health chief medical officer Larry Botts said its hospital had 16 patients including two in the intensive care unit.
“That’s a pretty big increase from what we’ve been having,” Botts said. “Two weeks, three weeks ago, we were averaging single digits as low as two. There has been a definite increase within the last seven days here and we’re a little concerned about that.”
Truman Medical Center had 14 patients including one in the intensive care unit who was on a ventilator.
Chief medical officer Mark Steele said none of the patients were fully vaccinated and that they were seeing patients in their 30s and 40s.
The hospital had gotten as few as five patients.
Physicians at the hospitals attributed the jump in hospitalizations to hesitation to get the vaccine, and the Delta variant.
“The risk obviously for everyone in general is that if we continue to have people where the virus can infect, then we’re at risk for developing additional mutations and we hope we don’t get one that then renders the current vaccine somewhat ineffective,” Steele said.
Liberty Hospital chief medical officer Raghu Adiga said the Delta variant was three to four times more transmissible than the original strain.
The hospital had 14 patients including two who required ventilators. One patient was as young as 36.
“We’ve seen an increase in COVID volume for the past month or so, mostly coming from up north here,” Adiga said.
A couple patients were fully vaccinated, but neither were in the ICU. One was a kidney transplant patient and the other was older and immuno-compromised.
The physicians said those eligible to get vaccinated should do so and in the meantime, they should continue wearing masks.
“We continue to encourage people, do what we can, to get people vaccinated because that’s absolutely our best defense against COVID,” Botts said.
The Kansas City metro area added more than 130 new COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, increasing the seven-day rolling average for new cases to 91, according to data tracked by The Star.
