‘Results are promising’: Johnson County to test more residents for COVID-19 next week
Johnson County is planning to test another group of randomly selected residents for the novel coronavirus at a drive-thru location next week, as part of its expanded community testing program.
Last Friday, the county launched the $400,000 program aimed at collecting more data on the outbreak of COVID-19. Out of 369 residents who were tested, 14, or about 3.8%, tested positive, Sanmi Areola, public health director, said at a Johnson County Board of Commissioners meeting on Thursday.
“We are learning about this virus as we go,” Areola said. “Our results are promising, they are. And I think that’s a product of us working together. For us to be successful in curtailing this … we have to do this together. Residents have to be a part of it. Businesses have to be a part of it.”
Areola said while preliminary results show mitigation strategies might be working to reduce the spread of the virus, it is still too early to draw any definitive conclusions. He continued to push for more data as the county makes decisions about how to reopen the economy.
On April 24, the county will invite another group of about 500 residents to be tested at a drive-thru location in Olathe.
Johnson County is working with the marketing firm ETC Institute to develop a random sampling pool of residents, who are supposed to be representative of the area’s demographics. It will select some residents with symptoms of coronavirus and others who are asymptomatic.
County officials hope to test at least 2,000 residents through the program, then use the data to guide decisions. On Thursday, Johnson County Commission Chairman Ed Eilert announced the county will remain under Kansas’ statewide stay-at-home order, which Gov. Laura Kelly has extended until May 3.
Kansas City, on the other hand, has extended its order until May 15. But Eilert said the county will monitor the number of cases, then decide whether another extension is necessary.
“When we start to roll things back, we have to be ready for infections to peak up,” Areola said. “We have to be ready to do more testing. … We have to be ready to provide more oversight. We have to be ready to do more contact tracing, so we don’t go back and lose all of the gains that we’ve made.”
The residents who tested positive for coronavirus will be contacted by the county and ordered to self-isolate. The county will instruct anyone who has been in contact with those individuals to do the same.
In addition to the random community testing, Areola said the county will test about 250 front-line workers on Friday. The county has invited hospice workers, first responders, child care providers and others to be tested at a drive-thru clinic at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School. Only residents who are invited are allowed to visit the site.
Areola said securing testing resources, such as swabs and collection kits, remains a challenge. But he thanked the county for allocating the funding to expand testing. Due to statewide shortages, the Kansas health department has only been testing Johnson County residents who need to be hospitalized.
As of Thursday afternoon, Johnson County had reported 343 cases of coronavirus and 22 deaths. Out of the 3,353 tests that have been conducted, 10.2% have come back positive.
