photo by: Kevin Anderson/Journal-World File Photo

The Lawrence-Douglas County health department's home at the Community Health Facility, 200 Maine St., is pictured in this file photo from July 2010.

Active COVID cases in Douglas County soared past the 1,000 mark, health leaders announced on Wednesday, but the spate of new cases did not produce an increase in hospitalizations.

As of Wednesday, Douglas County had 1,216 active COVID cases, which was up from 987 active cases on Monday. However, inpatients being treated for COVID at LMH Health remain virtually steady at 15 patients, down one from Monday’s figures.

The new numbers, though, put Douglas County firmly in the code red transmission category, which is triggered anytime active case numbers top 1,000. The code red designation — the highest of three alert levels — is expected to lead to discussion about whether Douglas County commissioners should implement a new mask mandate for residents.

Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health Director Dan Partridge told the Journal-World on Tuesday that discussion of a mask mandate was expected when the community’s Unified Command team — consisting of Partridge, the county administrator and the president/CEO of LMH Health — meets next week with the county’s public health officer.

Partridge said it was not certain the public health officials would recommend a mask mandate, but he said it warrants discussion now that the community is in the code red designation. Ultimately, Douglas County commissioners would have to approve any mask mandate.

The code red designation, though, does come with a set of recommendations from the health department on how members of the public may want to change their behaviors. Those include: exercising outside and alone; limiting contact in indoor public places by using delivery or pickup services for groceries; and limiting group social gatherings to virtual options.

Other numbers from Wednesday’s report include:

• The 14-day moving average for new COVID cases is now 55.79 cases per day. That’s up from the previous average of 47 cases, which was for the period ending Dec. 22.

• Douglas County residents who are taking COVID tests are testing positive at a rate of 5.4%, which is up from 4.2% last week.

• The number of COVID deaths in Douglas County remained unchanged for the week, at 111 since the beginning of the pandemic.

Wednesday’s report didn’t provide details about how many of the active cases were the omicron variant, but on Monday Partridge told the Journal-World that omicron remained rare in Douglas County. He said the vast majority of cases in Douglas County, at that time, were the delta variant.