KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The first Kansas death related to COVID-19 occurred as early as January 2020 – not March of the same year, as previously reported – according to Kansas Department of Health and Environment data.
A KDHE COVID-19 death summary reports that an individual in Leavenworth County died Jan. 9, 2020, followed by a Hamilton County resident on Jan. 15, 2020.
However, Gov. Laura Kelly announced on March 12, 2020, that a Wyandotte County man in his 70s was the state’s first resident to die from the virus. At the time, the man’s death was the first reported in either Kansas or Missouri as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, most recently updated on Tuesday, shows one COVID-19-related death the week of Jan. 11, 2020, nationwide. State-level CDC data for Kansas features a “blank cell” in the same timeframe, meaning that less than 10 deaths were reported and were “suppressed” in order to abide by National Center for Health Statistics confidentiality standards.
A CDC morbidity and mortality report published in April 2020 found that community transmission wasn’t detected until February of that year and by the following month, every state and four U.S. territories were reporting virus cases.
