photo by: Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health

Sept. 11 COVID-19 update from the health department

A tenth Douglas County resident has died from COVID-19, according to the health department’s update about the virus on Friday.

Previously, Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health announced that nine people — three residents between the ages of 65 and 74, one resident between the ages of 75 and 84 and five residents age 85 or older — had died from COVID-19 or with the virus as a contributing factor in their deaths.

This week’s death was a woman in the 85-plus age range who was not hospitalized, health department spokesperson George Diepenbrock said.

Douglas County has reported 1,823 cases of COVID-19 as of Friday, an increase of 31 cases since Thursday.

The county has averaged about 23 new cases per day over the last 14 days, according to a 14-day moving average graph updated weekdays by the health department. The current average of 23 new cases per day is down from a recent high of 44 cases per day in late August and up from a recent low of about eight cases per day in early August.

In Douglas County, 1,104 out of the 1,823 cases are inactive or beyond the infectious period, according to Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health.

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

The Douglas County Community Scorecard noted nine 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 19 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 26,888 Douglas County residents had been tested for the disease so far. The county’s testing rate per 1,000 people was 219.9. Douglas County has the second-highest testing rate out of Kansas’ counties, following Ford County, which has a testing rate of 268.3 people per 1,000.