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Coping with COVID: Select Mo., Kan. counties show no new cases for first time since spring

By Madison Parry

National data tracked daily by The New York Times shows that as of Tuesday, Feb. 16, Missouri had five counties with no reported new COVID-19 cases. This was the first time any Missouri county showed no new cases since last spring. As of the same date, Kansas had 15 counties with no new cases reported.

According to a daily updated COVID-19 tracking project by The New York Times, Missouri has five counties with no reported new cases as of Tuesday, Feb. 16.

Until this week, every one of the Show-Me state’s 114 counties had been seeing new cases since spring of 2020.

On the Kansas side, the first no-new-cases counties started showing up two weeks ago. As of today, Wednesday, Feb. 17, there are 15 counties without any new case reports from yesterday on Feb. 16.

Missouri is showing promising improvement in the fight against COVID-19 as the state – and nation – continues to fight the virus’ lingering impact.

This week also marked five straight days of fewer than 1,000 cases in Missouri, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. On Tuesday, the state website showed 481 new cases, a count not seen since July 2020.

As of Tuesday, Feb. 16, Missouri’s seven-day rolling average for new cases was 749, hitting the lowest level since 710 on July 16. This is down from a peak of 5,099 on Nov. 19, 2020, according to Worldometer.

The same metric for Kansas showed that Feb. 15 has the lowest average daily case count (649 cases) since Oct. 8, 2020, when it was 630. The state’s peak was 2,849 on Nov. 17, 2020.

Deaths are dropping in each state, but not at rates commensurate with case declines. Most of that lag attributed to the three-to-four weeks between diagnosis and deaths.