KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Health leaders from the Core4 jurisdictions of Kansas City, Missouri, Wyandotte County, Johnson County and Jackson County met Wednesday to discuss the latest masking guidance released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Officially, the meeting was part of an on-going series of bi-weekly meetings between the jurisdictions as part of their response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Wednesday’s meeting carried extra urgency following Tuesday’s CDC recommendations.
On Tuesday night, KCMO Mayor Quinton Lucas announced that he would follow the CDC’s updated mask guidance and call for new requirements for mask wearing indoors.
While the Core4 leaders made no official announcement following Wednesday’s meeting, a spokesperson representing the group indicated additional information would be released in the upcoming days.
After the meeting, Lucas tweeted that the latest data from the Mid-America Regional Council’s COVID-19 dashboard showed there were 139 new COVID-19-related hospital admissions in the metro on Tuesday - the highest total since Jan. 26.
Lucas noted that if that average doubles, it will exceed the level of hospitalizations set last winter.
Per the Mid-America Regional Council, metro-wide there were 139 new COVID hospitalizations yesterday (Tuesday 7/27), the highest one day total since January 26th. The daily average has essentially doubled in July, if it doubles again we’ll be above the peak we were at last winter
— Mayor Q (@QuintonLucasKC) July 28, 2021
As part of Wednesday’s Core4 discussion, Dr. Sanmi Areola, director of the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment, told the group that while they expected to see some surge after people returned to a more normal routine, the increase had been made worse by how quickly the delta variant can spread.
