Last month, KU hospital had 40 COVID patients. Monday, they had 108
At the beginning of December, the University of Kansas Health System had 40 patients with the coronavirus.
One month later, the hospital is treating 108, staff announced Monday.
Of the 73 patients reported with active (or contagious) cases, only five are fully vaccinated, Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at The University of Kansas Health System, said during a COVID-19 briefing on Monday.
The number of patients in the Kansas City, Kansas, hospital’s ICU increased from 15 Friday to 20 Monday, hospital officials said.
“For us, Thanksgiving was really a delta event,” Stites said of the COVID-19 variant that most heavily-dominated case counts and hospital beds for the four to six weeks following the holiday.
In Kansas, Stites said while the current regional hospitalization, ICU and ventilator numbers are still likely driven by delta, it’s not yet known what will happen four to six weeks out from Christmas and New Year’s Eve gatherings as cases of the omicron variant likely begin to outpace delta cases.
Omicron is believed to have a lower hospitalization risk than delta.
But when there’s a spike in infections, like there is now across the United States, even a small percentage of those infected being hospitalized is going to be a large number of people, Dr. Dana Hawkinson, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Kansas Health System, added during the media briefing.
Regardless, the message from hospital officials remains the same: get vaccinated.
“The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that vaccination continues to prevent serious hospitalization and death, even with omicron,” Stites said.
The Associate Press contributed reporting.
This story was originally published January 3, 2022 at 2:56 PM.
