Big jump in Kansas COVID deaths, but only 7 are recent

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) has added 476 more deaths to the state’s COVID-19 death toll, bringing it to a total of 9,555.

However, the KDHE included this note: “The large increase in the number of COVID-19 deaths is attributed to the OVS (Office of Vital Statistics) death reconciliation process.”

To find out if any of those deaths are recent, we explored the state’s COVID-19 dashboard and learned that only seven of those deaths were in the past seven days.

The KDHE shows that as of Tuesday, 170 Kansans are hospitalized with COVID-19:

• 156 patients are adults (down five from last week)
• 14 are children (down five)
• 28 of the patients are in intensive care (up six)

The number of new coronavirus cases is down slightly from week to week. In the past seven days, 2,645 Kansans tested positive for the coronavirus, compared to 2,779 in the previous week.

The state tests some of the positive cases for variants and subvariants. Of those tested recently, 205 came back as being the BA.4/BA.5 subvariants.

Kansans continue to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, including getting the boosters that target BA.4 and BA.5.

The KDHE shows that 34,864 vaccine doses have been administered in the past week:

• 3,136 Kansans got their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine
• 3,444 got their second dose
• 28,284 got a booster dose

The percentage of Kansans receiving at least one dose is 64.4%, while 56.3% have completed a vaccine series.