photo by: Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health

Aug. 21 COVID-19 update from the health department

Three more Douglas County residents have died from COVID-19, the health department announced on Friday.

Previously, Douglas County announced that five people — a male resident in his 70s, three male residents in their 80s and one female resident in her 80s — had died from COVID-19 or with the virus as a contributing factor in their deaths. This week’s deaths included a man in his 70s, a woman in her 70s and a woman in her 80s, health department spokesperson George Diepenbrock said. Two of the people who died had been hospitalized at LMH Health, according to a Friday update from the hospital.

Also on Friday, Lawrence Presbyterian Manor stated that after testing 35 residents and 92 employees, all tests came back negative for COVID-19. This mass testing was conducted after three health care residents tested positive for COVID-19 on Aug. 16 and after an employee had tested positive on Aug. 11.

Douglas County has reported 889 cases of COVID-19 as of Friday, an increase of 19 cases since Thursday.

In Douglas County, 765 out of the 889 cases are inactive or beyond the infectious period, according to Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health.

The county has averaged about 12 new cases per day over the last 14 days, according to a 14-day moving average graph updated weekdays by the health department. At its height, the 14-day average was about 22 cases per day in early to mid-July. The current average of 12 cases per day is up from a recent low of about nine cases per day in early August.

Six patients at Lawrence’s hospital had COVID-19 on Friday, one fewer than Thursday.

The Douglas County Community Scorecard noted that there were four new outbreaks of COVID-19 in Douglas County this past week. An outbreak is defined as two or more cases not from the same household with the same identified source of exposure. The scorecard also notes that 27 cases from this past week were due to community transmission: that is, the cases could not be linked to a known case, an outbreak or travel.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s online map noted that 15,517 Douglas County residents had been tested for the disease so far. The county’s testing rate per 1,000 people was 126.9.