I tried adding a stickyHeader as suggested in this answer. However, the performance is not close to the production-ready code because of the loop as my list is a bit bigger.

Here is my attempt:

LazyColumn(
    reverseLayout = true
) {
    val itemCount = list.itemCount
    var lastHeader: String? = null

    for (index in 0 until itemCount) {
        val item = list.peek(index)
        val headerString = item?.date

        if (item !== null && headerString != lastCharacter) {
            stickyHeader(key = headerString) {
                Text(
                    text = "Header: $headerString",
                    modifier = Modifier
                        .fillMaxWidth()
                        .background(Color.Red)
                        .padding(16.dp)
                )
            }
        }

        item(key = item?.communicationId) {
            // Gets item, triggering page loads if needed
            when (val item = list[index]) {
                is Type1 -> {
                    [email protected] {
                        Type1Cell()
                    }
                }
                is Type2 -> {
                    [email protected] {
                        Type2Cell()
                    }

                }
                null -> {
                    [email protected] {
                        LoadingCell()
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        lastHeader = headerString
    }
}

The data-source is a usual flow being collected as:

val items = viewModel.items.collectAsLazyPagingItems()

Also, I noticed the paging API calls keep hitting the backend even without scrolling the list. Is there any better or a stable way to have the stickyHeader with paging 3?