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Coping with COVID: Metro doctors optimistic after holidays fail to produce surge in new cases

By Madison Parry and Dennis Boone

The University of Kansas Health System doctors noted during a Tuesday media briefing there has been no huge surge in COVID-19 patients since Christmas. New data also shows Missouri’s rolling seven-day average daily case count has fallen 58.5 percent since November 2020.

A Tuesday morning media briefing with local officials and doctors from The University of Kansas Health System gave reports of a optimistic trend in the metro, noting there has been no huge surge in admitted COVID-19 patients in the more than three weeks since Christmas.

The health system reported a slight uptick but steady number of active COVID-19 patients being treated in the hospital Tuesday with 67 people with the active virus hospitalized, up from 66 Friday.

Twenty-one patients are in the ICU, the same county as Friday. Forty-seven patients are still hospitalized because of COVID-19 but are out of the acute infection phase, down from 54 Friday, for a total of 114 patients, down from 120 Friday.

Since peaking on Nov. 18 at 5,154, Missouri’s rolling seven-day average of new daily cases has fallen by 58.8 percent, to 2,123 as of Monday, according to The New York Times’ COVID Tracking Project.

Kansas, which also saw a peak on that same day in November, at 2,868, is also trending down, but not nearly at the same rate—34.2 percent.

Another measure, one that tracks the rate of viral spread by state, offered the most optimistic assessment of the two-state trend since the first wave of the outbreak began to recede in the spring.

 The web site Rt.live showed Missouri and Kansas tied with an Rt rate of .93, edging further below the 1.0 threshold that delineates between growth in the rate of spread and an overall decline. Neither state had been at that level, the site shows, since the final days of April and the start of May.

Overall, the site showed that the virus was in decline in 37 states and the District of Columbia. A month ago, only 25 states were below the 1.0 Rt level.