Kansas county’s COVID-19 spike sees officials, dozens of hospital staffers infected
Dozens of employees at a hospital in western Kansas have tested positive for the coronavirus as its COVID-19 rooms fill up.
More than 50 employees at the Gove County Medical Center have been infected with the virus, the hospital said in a statement Tuesday. At least 25 staff members have recovered and two are hospitalized.
That absence of employees, the medical center said, has “been felt facility-wide.”
Gove County, with a population of 2,600, is one of many rural Kansas counties being stressed by the pandemic and its late arrival.
Those infected in the county, which is more than 300 miles west of Kansas City, include its sheriff, its emergency management director and the hospital’s CEO, The Associated Press reported.
The county’s 22-bed medical center only has a handful of beds dedicated to COVID-19 patients and not enough staff to monitor the most serious cases around the clock.
The facility said “many of the regional hospitals” in western Kansas are also experiencing capacity occupancy.
Infections in Gove County doubled during the two weeks ending Wednesday, from 37 to 75, and that spike was proportionally among the largest in Kansas, according to the state Department of Health and Environment. But locally, doctors say the number is actually far higher — 140, with 88 in the past two weeks and almost all of them since Sept. 1.
Within a recent 10 days, seven county residents died — including six in the medical center’s long-term care.
“As a healthcare facility, we laugh, and we love with those that we care for, and mourn when they leave us,” the facility wrote on Facebook. “We offer our condolences to the families along with prayers for those affected by these deaths.”
When the county’s sheriff, Allan Weber, caught the virus, he found himself coughing and struggling to breathe, sometimes dozens of times a day. He landed in an acute-care hospital room more than an hour from home.
Weber has been hospitalized in the past for asthma attacks, but COVID-19 symptoms were more pronounced.
“You got body aches and headaches,” he told the AP. “The tightness in my chest is different.”
There are more than 240 active clusters of the virus throughout Kansas, according to state data.
Among them is another long-term care facility in western Kansas, Topside Manor. Located in Goodland, which has a population of about 4,30, the nursing facility has seen 41 infections in two weeks.
As of Thursday, more than 69,000 Kansans have been infected with the virus, including 838 who have died.
The Associated Press’ Andy Tsubasa Field and John Hanna contributed to this report.
This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 1:13 PM.
