After a couple of weeks of falling numbers, a slight uptick in the number of COVID-19 patients being treated at The University of Kansas Health System today. 29 with the active virus are being treated, up from 27 yesterday. Of those patients, 11 are in the ICU, up from 10 yesterday. Five of those ICU patients are on ventilators today, the same as yesterday. 49 other patients are still hospitalized because of COVID-19 but are out of the acute infection phase, down from 52 yesterday. That’s a total of 78 patients, down from 79 yesterday. In addition, HaysMed has a total of 20 COVID-19 inpatients, down from 21 yesterday, with nine of those active patients and 11 in the recovery phase.
Doctors say while they won’t be happy until there are zero COVID-19 patients in the hospital, they’re pleased by the lower numbers, especially after having a daily count of active patients above 100 not long ago.
On today’s Morning Media Update, KDHE Secretary Dr. Lee Norman returned to answer questions about the rollout in vaccinations across Kansas.
Dr. Norman says the UK variant is officially in Kansas, identified last week in Ellis County during routine testing of an athlete. After contact tracing of more than 200 people, the KDHE was encouraged to find only one other person with the virus. He also discussed the role of wastewater testing throughout the state and explained how it very accurately predicts the amount of the virus in a community. He says right now that amount is waning around the state. Even though the number of new cases in the state has dropped from 2000 per day to about 450 per day, he says we still have our hands full. 317,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered so far, which he says is a very low number, but reminds us the data reporting lags the actual number of doses. He says that number will increase as more vaccines are available. To find out where it’s available near you, he suggests the KDHE website and the Find My Vaccine feature, which is constantly updated. He says the role of retail pharmacies for vaccinations, especially in small communities, will be big. He also explained how no shots will go to waste at the end of the day, as they will contact people on a waiting list if there are an uneven number of doses remaining. He feels we need five times the amount of vaccine we currently have to start getting the whole state immunized in a timely way.
Dana Hawkinson, MD, medical director of Infection Prevention and Control at The University of Kansas Health System, says the current guidance is not to mix the manufacturers between the first and second dose unless there are extreme circumstances, though there are some trials underway to see if it’s safe and effective. He said symptoms after the second dose vary, with some seeing worse side effects than others. Taking Tylenol afterward is OK, he says, as there are no studies showing it lessens the effectiveness of the vaccine. He said two weeks ago we didn’t think we’d see such a big drop in the numbers of COVID-19 patients, especially since most of the population has yet to be vaccinated, and credits better behavior for the decrease.
Steve Stites, MD, chief medical officer at The University of Kansas Health system, says masking as a political statement seems to have died, and he’s seeing people do it now because they know it works. He agrees we need to speed up the timeline for vaccinations with more supplies. He points to a story by the New York Times showing at the current vaccination rate of 1.4 million people a day, it will take until December 10 to get everybody. And then, he says, it will be time to begin everyone’s booster shots. He said despite rumors and misleading social media reports, there have been no deaths directly from the COVID-19 vaccine, but there have been 440,000 deaths from the virus. He also said the vaccine has cut the number of COVID cases among health system staff by 80 percent. With 80 percent of the staff vaccinated, he says it’s proof the vaccine works. The intersection of faith, hope and science, he says, is powerful. Faith in the rules of infection prevention, hope that the rules will get us through the crisis and science which gives us the answers to help us all along.
Wednesday, February 10 at 8:00 a.m. is the next Morning Media Update. Are you having trouble sleeping since the pandemic? Dr. Nancy Stewart, pulmonary critical care and sleep medicine expert joins us to share what she's discovered by following the sleep habits of front line workers.
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