KANSAS CITY, Mo — Despite the pandemic nearing its two year mark, some counties in the Kansas City region are seeing their highest number of COVID-19 cases yet.
Johnson County and Wyandotte County set a record number in new infections. During the second week of January, Johnson saw an average of 1,436 daily new cases. On Wednesday, Wyandotte reported seeing 1,347 infections.
Wyandotte continues to battle low vaccination rates, less than 50% of their population is fully immunized against COVID-19.
"We've got a lot of people with complicated lives, in Wyandotte we have parents who are working two or three jobs and they have trouble getting to sites," Dr. Allen Greiner, medical officer at the Unified Government Department of Public Health, said.
Greiner said due to the rapid spread of the virus, contact tracing is no longer feasible in Wyandotte.
"When the surge first started, we tried sort of to prioritize some people, if we couldn't keep up with hundreds of cases a day at least reach out to fifty people who we thought were high risk," Griener said.
Dr. Joseph LeMaster serves as the public health officer for Johnson County and said despite seeing new daily case trends, COVID-19 traces in the county's wastewater are decreasing.
"The main thing we are seeing as an encouragement to us is that as we are getting to the peak of this current surge, we are starting to see some of the staff back and this is a great encouragement because as numbers have picked up in the hospital we've been concerned we might not be able care for everybody," LeMaster said.
—
We want to hear from you on what resources Kansas City families might benefit from to help us all through the pandemic. If you have five minutes, feel free to fill out this survey to help guide our coverage: KSHB COVID Survey.
