photo taken by: Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health
Aug 17 COVID-19 Health Department Update
Updated at 7.39am Monday
News emerged Monday of another cluster of COVID-19 cases at a long-term Lawrence precaution, while health department leaders also announced details on how K-12 schools in Douglas County could conduct classes during the pandemic.
Lawrence Presbyterian Manor will begin testing all residents for one employee and three residents will test positive for COVID-19, according to the facility.
Meanwhile, the local health department has also released information from the Unified Command of Education on recommendations for reopening schools. With a current infection rate of just 4% in Douglas County, the county is just below the level for schools to fully recover. At that level, the health department allows athletic competitions.
Cluster by Lawrence Presbyterian Manor
Lawrence Presbyterian Manor announced his positive cases in a press release on Monday.
After an employee tested positive for COVID-19 on August 12, the close contacts of that employee – 10 residents and four employees – were also tested for the virus, the facility said in the release. Three residents tested positive, bringing the total to four cases in the past seven days.
Lawrence Presbyterian Manor, established on Kasold Drive in 1429, is now considered a COVID-19 cluster, the press release said. This week, all health care and assisted living residents, as well as campus staff, a total of about 130 people, will be tested for COVID-19.
Residents testing positive for COVID-19 will be in isolation in a designated COVID-19 area and will be treated by a COVID-19 Response Team, according to the release. Asymptomatic positive residents will be quarantined for 14 days. Residents of symptoms may leave isolation for 72 hours if their symptoms have improved, after reporting no fever without the use of fever-reducing medications and as long as at least 10 days have elapsed since their symptoms first appeared.
Last week, the Journal-World reported that six residents and seven staff members tested positive for COVID-19 at Pioneer Ridge Health & Rehab. By mid-July, Brandon Woods longtime healthcare facility at Alvamar had five cases of COVID-19.
Guidelines for School Opening of Education Uniform Command
On Monday, the Unified Command of Education published recommendations on reopening schools. The recommendations include that schools should only be at a distance without out-of-school or sports if the percentage of positive cases in the province is above 10%. If the local infection rate is less than 5%, schools can start attending classes in person or continue with a hybrid in-person and remote model, reducing the number of students in school buildings at the same time.
Currently, the infection rate is slightly more than 4%, according to the Department of Health. But if the rate increases to more than 5%, the recommendations ask schools to conduct classes through the hybrid option. It also makes it possible to continue sports practices, but recommends playing games for some “high-risk” sports, such as football and soccer.
Most schools in Douglas County will not open until September. However, Perry-Lecompton is scheduled to start on Wednesday, and will begin the school year with its hybrid option, according to the school district’s website. In addition, the Law Board School Board has chosen to begin the school year with six weeks of full-time distance learning, meaning it will not consider transitioning to an option for individuals as hybrid learning, described in the guidance until mid-October.
On Monday, Douglas County reported 24 new cases of COVID-19 since Friday at 2 p.m., bringing the total since the pandemic began at 836.
In Douglas County, 126 of the 836 total cases are active, according to Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health.
The province has averaged about 10 new cases per day in the last 14 days, according to a 14-day moving average graph updated weekdays by the Department of Health. The health department changed its graph from a seven-day moving average to a 14-day moving average to match the metric used in the reopening of school. At its peak, the 14-day average averaged about 22 cases per day in early to mid-July. The current average of 10 cases per day is slightly up from a recent low of about nine cases per day in early August.
Ten patients at Lawrence Hospital had COVID-19 on Monday, five more than Friday. An update from LMH Health said the hospital is once again planning for a possible turnout.
The online map of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment ordered that 14954 Douglas County residents had been tested for the disease so far. The test percentage of the province per 1,000 people was 122.3.
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