As pandemic wanes, Wyandotte County shutting down its mass testing and vaccination site

KANSAS CITY, Ks. (KCTV) - With Kansas City area COVID numbers cratering in recent weeks, the Wyandotte County Health Department is shuttering its mass testing and vaccination site.

The State Avenue site at the former Kmart location has served as a mass testing site almost the entire COVID-19 pandemic. The site will continue its current duties through March 30.

The health department said county residents can still take advantage of other vaccination and testing sites, including COVID vaccines by appointment at the health department building on Ann Avenue in downtown Kansas City, KS.

The more-mild Omicron variant of COVID-19 raged locally over the winter, reaching its apex in mid-January, when the Kansas City metro was experiencing over 6,400 new cases a day. Since then, the local COVID infection rate has plummeted, now standing at 19 cases a day in the metro. Cases have dropped 35 percent in the past week, according to numbers from local hospitalized compiled by the Mid-America Regional Council.

Hospitalizations have also drastically dropped, from around 300 new hospitalizations a day in mid-January to a current rate of about 50. That number is expected to continue dropping, since hospitalization numbers lag a few weeks behind case numbers.

The former Kmart site administered its first COVID vaccine doses in December 2020. Since then, 90,477 vaccine doses have been administered at the location, and vaccines are now eminently available, as are COVID tests.