The University of Kansas Health System reports continued rising numbers of COVID-19 patients today. 29 patients with the active virus are being treated, up from 28 yesterday. It was as low as two patients on June 1. Eight of those patients are in the ICU, the same as yesterday, with two of those patients on ventilators, the same as yesterday. 10 other patients are still hospitalized because of COVID-19 but are out of the acute infection phase, the same as yesterday. That’s a total of 39 patients, up from 38 yesterday. Of the 29 patients with the active virus, six are vaccinated, the rest are not. All six of those patients have chronic critical illness such as heart or lung disease or are immunocompromised because of a transplant or chemotherapy. HaysMed has two patients today, after having one yesterday.
Today we debuted the first episode of Open Mics With Dr. Stites. It’s a chance every Wednesday for Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at The University of Kansas Health System, to bring us up to date on all things COVID, and dive deep into other medical topics, as well as answer media and community questions. Today’s conversation was with Dr. Doug Girod, chancellor of the University of Kansas, on what school will look like this fall.
Both Dr. Stites and Dr. Girod tackled the question of whether incentives work in getting people vaccinated. Dr. Stites feels anything that encourages vaccination is helpful. Dr. Girod said at KU they’ve looked at the issue extensively and found incentives don’t work very well. They discovered people who have not been vaccinated are not waiting for the right incentive but have made a conscious decision against it. He said, though, that KU will still offer incentives to those returning to campus and will make the vaccine widely available. He’s grateful that two thirds of the faculty and staff and 40 percent of students were vaccinated by the end of the last semester. Masks will not be required on campus for those who are not vaccinated but will be strongly recommended. The same is true for vaccinations, as the state is not allowed to require it, but students will be strongly encouraged to do so. If a vaccinated student has a close contact with someone who tests positive, they won’t have to quarantine but an unvaccinated student will have to quarantine. In general, he says dining halls and residence halls will be more like normal. Thanks to federal money, KU has been able to upgrade heating and air conditioning to better keep COVID-19 from spreading, as well as make many other permanent de-densifying measures on campus. One of the biggest questions is whether Allen Field House will be open to full capacity, and Dr. Girod says they hope so after seeing how professional sports have done it, but have not made a final decision yet. Overall, he says the biggest challenge was keeping 20,000 students, 14,000 employees and seven campuses safe over the last year, but he’s proud there were no major hot spots or outbreaks. He says things have definitely changed on campus, but he hopes for a more normal semester this fall.
Dr. Stites addressed the question of what’s taking so long for the vaccines to get full FDA approval. He said vaccines normally take two or three years to get to market and we were a little jaded by how fast these received emergency use authorization because of the pandemic. But he said the FDA is doing its job by studying all the data, and he thinks we’ll have that full approval by this fall. He also believes the vaccines will be approved for kids under 12 by this fall. He says we’re seeing a third wave of COVID-19 and it’s being caused by only one thing, a lack of vaccinations, especially in rural areas. He reminds us that even though the delta variant is more easily spread, the vaccines offer protection against it. He cautions there may be a time when masks are once again required for all, especially if variants reproduce and become vaccine resistant. In his words, “The real experiment is not the vaccination. The real experiment is the virus inside of you. You’re being used by the virus as a way for it to change itself into something that’s even more dangerous. Don’t let the virus use you.”
Thursday, July 15 at 8:00 a.m. is the next Morning Medical Update. We’ll talk all things COVID, plus investigate recent reports that sunscreen could cause cancer. Our head of dermatology weighs in.

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• Open Mics with Dr. Stites: How a Fatty Liver Diagnosis Helped a Woman Turn Her Life Around ( Download)
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