Kansas City metro is averaging 9 COVID-19 deaths every day
The Kansas City metropolitan area is recording an average of nine deaths from COVID-19 every day, the highest rate in more than six months.
In the past seven days, the metro added 64 COVID-19 deaths, raising the total since the pandemic began to 2,558.
On Tuesday, the area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas gained 690 new cases for a total of 181,357 to date.
That bumped the seven-day rolling average for new cases from 614 on Monday to 624, according to data tracked by The Star. One week ago, the average sat at 657. Two weeks ago, it was 676.
Over the past week, the metro added 4,367 more cases. Last week, the area gained 4,596 new cases and the week before, 4,730 were added.
Sixty patients were hospitalized for the virus at The University of Kansas Health System, up from 58 on Monday.
Nine of those patients are fully vaccinated.
“We’ve seen around the nation that the majority — 95% or more of those people who are in the hospital — are unvaccinated,” said Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control. “Our numbers tend to be a little bit lower for the unvaccinated population compared even to some of our colleagues around the city, but I think that’s because of the patient mix that we are getting, the selection bias, and some of those patients that are transferred in as well as our large population of solid organ transplant, cancer patients and other people who are immuno-suppressed.”
On Tuesday, Kansas reported 368,976 total cases including 5,557 deaths. The monthly positive test rate was 10.3%.
In Kansas, 45.5% of the population is fully vaccinated.
Missouri identified 630,067 total cases including 10,610 deaths. The seven-day positive test rate was 12.4%.
Forty-five percent of the population in Missouri is fully vaccinated.
Across the country, more than 39.1 million people have contracted COVID-19 and 639,271 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
