Kansas Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Beam speaks at a news briefing on April 20, 2020.

The state of Kansas over the weekend received supplies for 7,000 new COVID-19 tests for four counties in the state that have meat-processing facilities, Gov. Laura Kelly said Monday.

Finney, Ford and Seward counties in southwest Kansas, and Lyon County in the east-central part of the state, are the four counties that will significantly increase testing capacities in the coming days.

Though the four counties have seen over 330 positive cases, state Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Beam said Monday that residents should not worry about the safety of their food and that the influx in positive tests was not leading to any food shortages in the state.

“It’s important to emphasize this is not a food safety issue,” he said. “There is no evidence of food or food packaging being associated with COVID-19.”

Kelly said her administration was still in the process of devising a long-term testing plan for the entire state. Such a plan, she said, is necessary before real discussions can take place about how and when to reopen the state’s economy.

Monday saw Kansas’ largest single-day uptick in cases since the pandemic began. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment has now confirmed 1,986 cases of COVID-19, up 137 cases since Sunday. The death toll in Kansas from the respiratory virus has now reached 100, the state also confirmed.

The state has received test results from a total of 18,761 tests — meaning 10.6% of Kansans are testing positive for the virus.

KDHE also tallied 405 hospitalizations related to the virus, out of 1,627 cases where data is available. That equates to a hospitalization percentage of 24.9%, a rate that has fallen in recent days. For several weeks, over 30% of applicable cases resulted in hospitalization.

Now seven weeks since the first reported case of the virus in Kansas, Kelly said the gravity of the situation remained.

“I recognize that we are talking about someone’s mom, someone’s husband, someone’s friend,” she said. “I don’t ever forget these are real people, not just numbers.”

KDHE Secretary Lee Norman said Monday that Kansas was now tracking 39 clusters, or outbreaks, of the novel coronavirus. A cluster is defined as two or more positive cases that result from known exposure to the disease, Norman said, and clusters in the state have now tallied 634 positive cases, 111 hospitalizations and 56 deaths.

The confirmed clusters can be traced to the following locations, Norman said:

• 14 from long-term care facilities;

• two group living arrangements;

• one correctional facility, in Lansing;

• two health care facilities;

• five religious gatherings;

• 15 gatherings of private company.

Kelly concluded her remarks Monday by again stressing that she understands the desire of many Kansans to reopen the state economy as soon as possible. Her administration has begun having those conversations, but she said the state still needed to complete a wide level of population testing for the virus before any sense of normalcy could truly be achieved.

“We all want to move forward as soon as we possibly can. Absolutely no one wants to keep people home a day longer than is necessary,” she said. “(If we move forward too soon) we will inevitably find ourselves facing a second wave.”