Aside from a few ‘hot spots,’ the 7-day moving average of new COVID-19 cases continues trending down in Kansas. Those hot spots are mostly around food processing facilities in southwest Kansas – Ford, Finney, and Seward counties – and Lyon County in eastern Kansas. These four counties have just 4% of the state’s population but they have 38% of the state’s COVID-19 cases.
In Johnson County, the state’s most populous, the daily change in cases has been below 5% of the previous day’s total for two weeks. The 7-day moving average is just a bit above 2%.
Adjacent Wyandotte County has periodically had a few out-of-pattern increases from new cases at long-term care facilities, but it’s 7-day moving average is still down over the last few weeks.
Sedgwick County, the state’s second-largest, also a spike in long-term care facilities but, aside from that one day, cases are trending down.
Shawnee County’s 7-day moving average is below 2% of the previous day’s total, with 13 new cases identified over the last seven days. Leavenworth County’s 7-day average is a bit over 4% and trending down; the county reported no new cases on one day recently and yesterday the county retracted a case from the day before.
The trend for the other 96 counties in Kansas is much lower than earlier in April, even though seven more counties reporting at least one case in the last seven days. Four weeks ago, the 7-day moving average of new cases was 12% of the previous day’s total; the average dropped to 4.36% two weeks ago, and it’s down to 4.23% today.
There are still 29 counties without any COVID-19 cases and another 47 counties reported fewer than two new cases over the last seven days.
As of this morning, the Kansas Department of Health reports a total of 3,491 confirmed COVID-19 cases spread across 76 counties, with 124 deaths. On a per-capita basis, the numbers of cases and deaths are far below the national average.
Governor Kelly has indicated she may lift her statewide lockdown of the private economy that is set to expire on May 3, but she hasn’t specified what restrictions she might leave in place.
