photo by: Screenshot/Kansas Office of the Governor

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, right, delivers a daily press briefing Friday, April 10, 2020, in Topeka.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday released more information on a disturbance at the Lansing Correctional Facility, in which two inmates received minor injuries during an 11-hour lockdown.

A handful of inmates barricaded themselves in a cell block around 3 p.m. Thursday, Kelly said, and in line with protocol, corrections officers left the area until a special operations unit could secure the block. No staff members were injured in the disturbance, which is still under investigation.

“The goal of my administration is to be transparent about incidents like this one,” Kelly said. “It appears that officers followed (Kansas Department of Corrections) protocols, which ensured injuries were minor and there was no loss of life.”

Kelly and KDOC Secretary Jeff Zmuda also addressed concerns regarding a COVID-19 outbreak at the facility. Zmuda said that while they didn’t know what triggered Thursday’s incident, it didn’t occur in the building where a dozen inmates are quarantined with confirmed cases of the respiratory virus.

Since the outbreak began, the department as a whole has taken steps to prevent the virus’ spread in facilities across the state, but acknowledged that social distancing is hard to accomplish in a prison.

“Social distancing is difficult, but we’ve taken steps to control movement,” Zmuda said.

Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Lee Norman also appeared at Friday’s daily COVID-19 briefing and shared a new development on the infection rate of COVID-19.

Scientists gauge a disease’s infection rate on a numerical scale. Measles — for those not vaccinated — has an infection rate of around 18, meaning one person could spread the disease to 18 other people. The infection rate of COVID-19 was thought to be around 3, Norman said, but new studies are showing that it’s actually closer to 6 — but that social distancing can reduce that number by a third.

“That should be a huge motivator for social distancing,” Norman said. “This could be a home run. And we can’t blink; we have to keep pushing on this, especially in this upcoming weekend, which would be one that people normally gather a lot.”

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., also announced Friday that hospitals in the state would receive $325 million from the federal stimulus package to mitigate losses from COVID-19.

“As hospitals are seeing significant revenue losses and others see their costs go up because of COVID-19, these new resources will be a necessary benefit not just to our hospitals, but to the communities and patients they serve,” Moran said in a news release.

Friday’s COVID-19 statistics in Kansas again showed a moderate uptick in confirmed cases of the virus. The state confirmed 60 new cases for the second day in a row, bringing the cumulative total to 1,166, up from 1,106 on Thursday. There were eight more confirmed COVID-19 related deaths, bringing the state total to 50.

The 1,166 confirmed cases are out of 11,414 total tests, meaning 10.2% of tests came back positive for the virus. That positive test rate has been fairly steady for the past week.

Testing numbers should be taken with the caveat that COVID-19 tests potentially have a high false negative rate, according to recent research, as well as the fact that widespread testing is still not available in Kansas or the rest of the country.

Last week, KDHE began releasing more comprehensive data in its daily updates, which now include the testing rate in each of Kansas’ 105 counties. In Douglas County, 965 people had been tested either by the state or by private labs, and 39 cases had been confirmed positive as of Friday.

The testing rate, the state said, equates to 7.89 tests per 1,000 county residents. That’s the third-highest rate among all Kansas counties.

KDHE is also tracking hospitalization rates for cases where such information is available. The department said 274 of the 902 positive COVID-19 cases that are being tracked have resulted in hospitalization thus far — a 30.4% rate for applicable cases.

Kelly said her staff is currently having discussions regarding whether to extend Kansas’ stay-at-home order, which is currently set to expire on April 19.

“We will be addressing that early next week,” she said. “My guess is yes, we’ll extend, but I don’t have those details yet.”