Kansas City metro daily average for new COVID cases continues rise, 12 deaths reported

The seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases in the Kansas City metropolitan area continues to rise reaching levels seen in early November of last year, according to data tracked by The Star.

On Monday, the area encompassing Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas gained 762 new cases for a total of 162,519 to date.

The seven-day rolling average for new cases has climbed sharply in the past month. On July 1, it was 91. On Tuesday, it was just shy of 618, according to data tracked by The Star. The last time the seven-day average was this high was in mid-January.

Days before the Thanksgiving holiday last year, the seven-day daily average of new cases peaked at 1,199 new cases.

On Tuesday, 12 new deaths were reported, raising the metro’s total to 2,353.

The surge in new cases comes even as vaccines have become widely available and free.

The University of Kansas Health System reported that the number of COVID patients remained steady Tuesday. The number of patients with the active virus being treated dropped from 38 to 37. Only seven of those patients had been vaccinated.

Twelve of the patients were in the ICU, down from 15 on Monday. Meanwhile, 10 patients were on ventilators, up from nine on Monday. There were 16 other patients who remained hospitalized because of COVID but were out of the acute infection phase, up from 14 on Monday.

During a morning medical update, Dr. Micholee Polsak, who had been fully vaccinated, talked about testing positive for COVID-19. She said it could’ve been much worse had she not been vaccinated.

Polsack, internal medicine physician at The University of Kansas Health System, was one of the first to get the vaccine when it became available in January for healthcare workers. She tested positive near the end of June.

“I was feeling fine until one day I was not,” she said. “At first I was just a little fatigued and didn’t think much of it. But I knew that that wasn’t my norm. I honestly got tested right away not because I thought I had COVID but because I wanted to be safe for my patients.”

Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at The University of Kansas Health System, said that with the original strain of the coronavirus, one person could infect one or two others after 10 minutes of exposure. New data suggest that those with the more potent delta variant, one person can infect six to 10 people with the same amount of exposure, making it much more dangerous.

“If we’re going to keep each other safe and we’re going to stem this tide here in our community, we’re going to have to put our masks back on and get vaccinated,” he said.