TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) – Shawnee Co. has returned to the maximum number of 24 on its COVID-19 community broadcast scoring card.
Health officials at Shawnee Co. released the update on Thursday afternoon, saying they are starting to see a spike in cases after the holiday.
It happens a day after the municipality saw a record number of cases of the virus reported to the health department in 233.
The incidence trend index – which was in the “low” zone as it decreased last week, was in the “uncontrolled” zone in the last report, with new cases up to 43% over the previous week.
Health officials say Shawnee Co. registered 152 new confirmed cases on Thursday alone. The county has also seen 42 residents die from COVID-related illnesses in the past two weeks.
Shawnee Co. also saw an increase in the percentage of tests that tested positive, from 9.9% last week to 12.8% this week. The hospital’s occupancy rate is also above 90%.
“We are very busy with COVID again, we don’t really slow down, we feel we have reached and we feel like we are on a plateau now,” said Stormont Vail Health CEO Dr. Robert Kenagy at the health department’s virtual press conference.
Health officials say 86 percent of cases at Shawnee Co. had no known source of infection, up from 92 percent the week before, but still in the “uncontrolled” zone.
Last week’s overall score was 18.
Regarding vaccination, the provisional health officer, Dr. Dennis Cooley, said the county is working to vaccinate health workers and those in phase one of the vaccination groups.
He said that a faster launch of the vaccine is based on things like available space, staff and ensuring that no doses of the vaccine will be missed.
He said that the more people who become eligible, it will be a group effort to ensure that everyone gets their dose.
“There will be larger numbers that we will be dealing with, so it will be a type of action across the community that will allow us to place the vaccine in these groups,” he said.
Even with the expansion of availability, he said that people cannot forget the security guidelines.
“Even if you are vaccinated, you still have to wear masks, you still have a lot of space and you still have to wash your hands and all the things we talked about,” he said.
When it comes to the question of entering vaccine administration data as state health officials have discussed, Steve Anderson, from the University of Kansas Saint Francis campus, said that all 20 vaccine administrators on the team are trained to enter data.
Dr. Kenagy said that 100 percent of vaccine administrators in Stormont Vail are also trained in this.
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