‘The numbers are going up’: Kansas City area hospitals getting more COVID patients

Two of Kansas City’s largest health care systems report COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising as the highly contagious BA.5 subvariant surges in the area and doctors warn people to take it seriously.

COVID-19 inpatient numbers in the Saint Luke’s Health System have been “holding steady in the 40s, 50s for several weeks,” said spokeswoman Lindsey Stich.

That’s compared to COVID hospitalizations in the 20s and 30s in mid-June, she said. Over the last week, those hospitalizations have ranged from a low of 40 on Sunday to a high of 58 on July 14.

By comparison, though, that’s not near the number of COVID patients Saint Luke’s had during one of its busiest stretches of the pandemic in January, when the hospital system housed 217 patients with active coronavirus.

On Wednesday, The University of Kansas Health System reported it was treating 48 COVID patients, up from 46 on Monday.

The hospital doesn’t test every incoming patient for COVID-19 anymore. But if it did, said chief medical officer Dr. Steve Stites, COVID hospitalizations would likely be 60 to 70.

But it’s the number of those COVID patients in the ICU that worries Stites. There were eight on Wednesday, doubling the number from Monday, with three on ventilators.

“I don’t like that number,” Stites said during a briefing Wednesday. “That bugged me a little bit and something we’ll really have to keep an eye on.”

Most experts, said Stites, would say that the BA.5 variant has “got the most patients infected at any one time, maybe more than omicron, certainly as high as the original omicron we saw last January. ICU numbers have been flat, but we’re seeing our ICU numbers start to rise again.”

At Olathe Health, “while we are nowhere near our high of 56 hospitalizations in January, we have seen a slight increase in COVID-19 patients,” said spokeswoman Libby Hastert.

On Monday, the health system had nine COVID patients. “With no patients currently on ventilators or in the CCU, patients are generally not as seriously ill as previous waves,” Hastert said.

University Health had 21 COVID patients at its downtown hospital Tuesday and five at its Lee’s Summit campus. Those numbers have hovered in the 20s since July 11, according to a tally the hospital shared with The Star.

University Health officials said their COVID hospitalizations are not as high as they were during their pandemic peaks. For instance, the health system had 133 COVID patients in January, 26 in ICU.

COVID-19 cases are surging in the Kansas City area, back to levels seen earlier this year. Last week officials reported 3,902 new cases over the previous week.

Numbers averaged close to 560 cases per day in the metro area, compared to the previous week’s daily average of 447 cases.

Because community COVID-19 testing has been suspended, and people don’t report results of at-home tests, it’s difficult to get an accurate picture of new cases in the area, Stites said.

“But any way you look at it, the percent positively is now the third-highest it’s been throughout he pandemic and continues to rise,” Stites said. “Again, there is a lot of BA.5 out there.”

He said, “If you compare where we are now with the BA.5 variant, we’re getting back to where we were with the delta variant. I don’t like that wave, and the numbers are going up.”

As of last week, all five counties that make up the Kansas City metro area remained at “high” transmission levels, along with more than 90% of all counties in the country, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meaning your risk of catching COVID-19 in a public place is high.

“The overall numbers are much higher thus far than hospitalizations. I think that’s good news,” said Stites. “It’s showing a lot of host immunity either from vaccination ... and it’s showing us that a lot of people have had COVID. So they may not get as sick, yet. And I say yet because we’re still on the rise. We’ll just have to see where that takes us.”

This BA.5 strain “is not to be trifled with,” said Stites. “It says to us if you’re at high risk, you need to start thinking about those preventive measures we know work ... keep your distance. Stay outside. If you’re sick don’t go around others.

“And I hate to say this but wear a mask, especially if you’re at high risk, if you’re going to go into big crowds.”

This week Jackson County, which has been following the CDC’s COVID guidelines, returned to requiring masks for employees and visitors in some buildings when the county joined the highest community level on the CDC’s map. The data is updated weekly, and masks would no longer be required if the county returns to the medium risk level, county officials said.

Stites said he is wearing a mask again at the grocery store and in crowded indoor settings.

“Not all the time,” he said. “I don’t think it’s back to those levels because we’re not seeing the same rate of hospitalizations, and that’s what will really push us.

“But let’s stay tuned. Because I think we have to watch and see where we go on these trends.”