‘High rate of spread’: Kansas City metro adds more than 5,100 COVID-19 cases in past week
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Kansas City COVID-19 news
As the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus surges across the Kansas City region, officials, hospitals and communities have had to react. Here is our latest coverage.
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The Kansas City metropolitan area has added more than 5,100 new COVID-19 cases and 38 more deaths in the past week.
On Tuesday, the area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas gained 621 new cases for a total of 167,664 to date.
Over the past week, the metro added 5,145 more cases. Last week, the area added 4,323 new cases and the week before that, 3,162 new cases were reported.
The seven-day rolling average for new cases sits at 735, according to data tracked by The Star. One week ago, the average was 618 and two weeks ago, it was 452.
The metro is averaging more than five COVID-19 deaths per day. A total of 2,391 people have died from the virus since the pandemic began.
The University of Kansas Health System reported its hospital had 43 patients being treated for the virus, up from 40 on Monday. Patients range in age from 3 to 93.
Juliann Van Liew, director of the Unified Government’s health department in Kansas City, Kansas, appeared on the health system’s briefing on Tuesday. Last week, officials in Wyandotte County mandated masks be worn indoors in public places.
“In Wyandotte County unfortunately, we’re just seeing uncontrolled community spread,” she said. “CDC has deemed us a high rate of spread across the county as it has most of the counties in the broader metro region. And so we’re just really concerned about the fact that even though people are coming in to be vaccinated in small numbers, that pays off in two to four weeks when they reach that immune response from that vaccine. What masks do is offer us an opportunity to intervene right now, here today.”
On Tuesday, Kansas reported 342,196 total cases including 5,322 deaths. The monthly positive test rate was 10.2%.
The state has administered 2,602,478 vaccine doses, with 42.9% of the population fully vaccinated.
Missouri confirmed 589,733 total cases including 9,970 deaths. The seven-day positive test rate was 14.3%.
The state has administered 5,442,108 vaccine doses, with 42.4% of residents fully inoculated.
Across the country, more than 35.9 million people have contracted COVID-19 and 617,798 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
This story was originally published August 10, 2021 at 3:20 PM.
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