Douglas County now has 40 cases of COVID-19

photo by: Contributed/LMH Health

A COVID-19 drive-thru testing site at Lawrence's hospital, LMH Health, is pictured Tuesday, April 7, 2020.

The number of Douglas County residents who have tested positive for COVID-19 since the pandemic began is 40, the same as Sunday’s count, local health officials announced Monday.

Of those 40, 23 cases are believed to have been contracted through travel, eight from local transmission and eight from contact with someone with a positive case. One case is still under investigation for type of transmission.

Contact with a positive case means the health department has determined the person’s exposure to a known positive case was the source of his or her contracting COVID-19, whereas local transmission means the department’s investigators could not identify the source of the person’s disease and the person had not recently traveled to an area where COVID-19 was present.

The 40 local cases involve two people in their late teens, 17 people in their 20s, 10 people in their 30s, five people in their 40s, three people in their 50s, one person in his or her 60s, one person in his or her 70s and one person who is over the age of 80, according to Monday’s news release from the health department. Of those cases, 22 are men and 18 are women, the health department said.

Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health also announced Monday that 26 out of the 40 people with cases of COVID-19 have recovered. Previously, the health department had reported that 27 people had recovered, but one of those people reported a relapse in symptoms on Sunday.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced that, as of 10:30 a.m. Monday, a total of 1,376 Kansas residents had tested positive for COVID-19, including 62 deaths as a result of the disease.

KDHE’s online map noted that 1,043 Douglas County residents have been tested for the disease so far. The county’s testing rate per 1,000 people was 8.53, the fourth-highest in the state.

The daily update from LMH Health announced that, as of 8:30 a.m. Monday, there was one patient at Lawrence’s hospital with COVID-19 and another who was under investigation for the virus. LMH Health was using 6% of its ventilators on Monday, 4% of its critical care (ICU) beds and 21% of its hospital beds.

LMH Health had collected a total of 828 specimens for COVID-19 testing as of Monday, and 37 of those specimens had tested positive for the virus. From Friday through Sunday, LMH Health collected 37 specimens.

photo by: Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health

Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health released this graph of COVID-19 cases Monday, April 13, 2020.

photo by: Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health

Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health released this graph of COVID-19 cases Monday, April 13, 2020.

More coverage: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

The Journal-World has made this coverage of COVID-19 available for free, outside of the paywall on LJWorld.com.

Find all coverage of city, county and state responses to the virus at: ljworld.com/coronavirus/

Please consider subscribing to support the local journalists who are helping to inform our community: ljworld.com/subscribe/

What to do if you think you may have COVID-19

Patients who have symptoms — difficulty breathing, cough and fever — should stay home, immediately isolate themselves from others and call their health care providers. Patients should never show up unannounced at a medical office or hospital. Instead, they should call ahead to explain their symptoms and give health care workers the ability to minimize the risk to others.

If patients do not have health care providers, they may call the Lawrence Douglas-County health department’s coronavirus line, 785-856-4343.

For updated information on the outbreak, Kansas residents can email COVID-19@ks.gov or call 866-534-3463 (866-KDHEINF), which is staffed 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday; 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday; and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.

More information can be found through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s website or the Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health website.

COMMENTS

Welcome to the new LJWorld.com. Our old commenting system has been replaced with Facebook Comments. There is no longer a separate username and password login step. If you are already signed into Facebook within your browser, you will be able to comment. If you do not have a Facebook account and do not wish to create one, you will not be able to comment on stories.