COVID-19 news: 4 new Wyandotte County deaths, nursing home has largest outbreak in KS
Both Wyandotte and Johnson counties reported new instances of people dying from the coronavirus disease, raising the number of deaths in both counties to 10 each, according to statistics from local health officials updated Tuesday morning.
Four more people died in Wyandotte County and two more in Johnson County, according to the update. Details of the deaths were not immediately available. In Kansas, at least 29 people have died from the virus.
Four of the deaths in Wyandotte County are from Riverbend Post Acute Rehabilitation at 7850 Freeman Avenue. There are 37 confirmed cases of COVID-19 linked to the rehabilitation health care facility, including four employees. The rest are residents, a local health officials said.
The outbreak is currently the second largest outbreak in Kansas of the virus.
The number of new positive tests in Kansas continue to grow. At least 217 people in Johnson County have tested positive, 190 in Wyandotte County and 845 in Kansas.
Nationwide, 378,289 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and there have been 11,830 deaths as of late Tuesday morning, according to a database maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
Eastern Kansas county nursing home has state’s largest outbreak
The Life Care Center of Burlington in Coffey County, Kansas, is connected to 41 confirmed cases of coronavirus, making it the largest outbreak in the state, according the county health department.
Both residents and employees are among the total. Not all the cases tied to the facility are reported in Coffey County’s COVID-19 statistics. That’s because some of the employees who have tested positive live in other counties and their cases are counted where they live.
One of the residents of the skilled nursing facility died earlier this month.
“It shouldn’t be surprising to us that we are seeing more cases,” said Lindsay Payer, administrator of the Coffey County Health Department. “Due to the ongoing investigation process, we are now receiving results from some who were presumed positive and were tested to confirm.”
All but two of the Coffey County cases have come from the Life Care Center, Payer said.
Experts say Missouri governor’s stay-at-home order is weak
Experts say Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s “statewide stay-at-home order for all Missourians” is merely a recommendation to continue social distancing.
Under Parson’s order, no businesses are required by the state to close their doors. It does enact capacity limits on essential business, all other “non-essential” business can stay open as long as they adhere to his previous executive order banning gatherings of 10 or more people.
Local governments are left to determine whether they want to enact stronger stay-at-home orders, which was the case before Parson’s order.
Arthur Reingold, professor of epidemiology at the University of California-Berkeley’s School of Public Health, was equally unimpressed.
“Sounds like a half-hearted effort to me,” he said.
