As a national discussion weighs reopening the national economy against sacrificing lives to do so, numbers of positive COVID-19 cases in Wyandotte County and the number of deaths continue to rise slightly.
Wyandotte County reported 361 positive cases and 31 deaths on Wednesday morning, an increase of 16 cases and two deaths since Tuesday morning, according to the Unified Government’s COVID-19 webpage.
Kansas reported 69 deaths and 1,426 positive cases on Tuesday morning, according to Kansas Department of Health and Environment statistics.
KU Health System had 34 positive COVID-19 patients on Wednesday morning, with 11 in the intensive care unit, and nine patients are on ventilators, Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director, infection control and prevenetion at KU Health System, said. Some patients have been discharged. The number of positive COVID-19 patients is up slightly from Tuesday.
If society reopens its normal way of life too early, there would be concerns, according to the KU doctors.
“The volume of COVID-19 that we would have would overwhelm our health care system,” Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer of KU Health System, said.
A national projection from the University of Washington has stated that Kansas could have more than 500 deaths after the peak of COVID-19, and Missouri could have 1,700 or more deaths. There are many variables in the projections, according to the doctors, and there are a lot of other projections with different numbers, also.
News out of Japan this morning, where they have reopened their society, reported that the health officials are concerned that they have overwhelmed their system, Dr. Stites said. Numbers of COVID-19 cases could rise again.
He said they are hearing from doctors in New York that it would not be like anything they have known, that there would be a grave toll, and they would be unable to keep up with the burden of the disease.
He said he wouldn’t know how to answer a question about the downside of people staying home, such as increased domestic violence, depression, anxiety and negative economic effects. Those things are true, and he said they are discussing the situation with local and state leaders how to keep society safe so they can reopen.
“We will have imperfect answers,” Dr. Stites said. “In that imperfect world, I think you do the next right thing that is in front of you. And even when we start to open up society, which we’ll have to do, and providing there’s not a miracle therapy or cure or vaccination available, as we reopen that we’ll still have to respect the rules of infection control to prevent the disease spreading. If we unleash it all at once,” he said, “some of us will get through it, some of us won’t, and the number who won’t will be a lot higher than it is right now. That’s the challenge, and that’s tough math.”
Dr. Hawkinson said the virus will affect people physically, psychologically and spiritually, bringing out new issues that people may not have had before.
Dr. Stites said that KU Health System is part of a national study of antibodies in patients.
Dr. Ronald Chen, radiation oncology chair at KU Health System, said that there is a COVID-19 research group at KU Health System. There is currently an effort to bring a new drug to trial at KU Health System, he said. Also, KU Health System is trying to design a study on the effect of COVID-19 on cancer care, he said.
To view the KU doctors’ news conference, with more information on a variety of COVID-19 topics, visit https://www.facebook.com/kuhospital/videos/710469366424922/.
The UG’s COVID-19 webpage is at https://alpha.wycokck.org/Coronavirus-COVID-19-Information
The Kansas COVID-19 resource page is at https://govstatus.egov.com/coronavirus.
The CDC COVID-19 page is at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html