Douglas County COVID-19 count remains steady at 42

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 is 42, the same number as Wednesday’s count, local health officials announced Thursday.

Of those 42, 25 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 42 local cases involve two people in their late teens, 18 people in their 20s, 10 people in their 30s, five people in their 40s, four 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 Wednesday’s news release from the health department. Of those cases, 22 are men and 20 are women, the health department said.

Twenty-nine out of the 42 people with cases of COVID-19 have recovered.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced that, as of 10 a.m. Thursday, a total of 1,588 Kansas residents had tested positive for COVID-19, including 80 deaths as a result of the disease.

KDHE’s online map noted that 1,081 Douglas County residents have been tested for the disease so far. The county’s testing rate per 1,000 people was 8.84, the sixth highest in the state.

The daily update from LMH Health announced that, as of 8:30 a.m. Thursday, there were no patients at Lawrence’s hospital with COVID-19 and five who were under investigation for the virus. LMH Health was using none of its ventilators on Wednesday, 4% of its critical care (ICU) beds and 22% of its hospital beds.

LMH Health had collected a total of 896 specimens for COVID-19 testing as of Thursday, and 37 of those specimens had tested positive for the virus. On Wednesday alone, LMH Health collected 18 specimens.

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.