With COVID-19 cases dropping in Johnson County, officials won’t report data every day
With the number of new coronavirus cases waning, Johnson County health officials will now only provide updates on new daily cases five days a week, a health official confirmed this week.
The Johnson County Department of Health and Environment will no longer update the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 on weekends, said Elizabeth Holzschuh, epidemiology director for the Johnson County health department, in an email.
“JCDHE has been discussing moving from a 7 day to a 5 day-a-week updates for several months as a number of our neighboring jurisdictions have reduced the frequency of their updates,” Holzschuh said.
“As the case counts have decreased, and the emphasis of the community and external communication from the department has shifted to vaccination efforts, it seemed like an opportune time to allow JCDHE and DTI staff to stop updating the dashboard on the weekend.”
Johnson County, along with Wyandotte and Jackson, recently joined the rest of the Kansas City metro in lifting their curfews on bars and restaurants, they announced in a joint statement Thursday.
A new and more easily transmissible strain of the coronavirus has been detected in wastewater systems in eastern Jackson County, Kansas City and in wastewater originating in Johnson County, Jackson County Executive Frank White previously said.
A small number of staff has been updating the county’s dashboard seven days a week for nearly a year. The change will ease the burden them, she said. The county has seen a decline in the transmission of the coronavirus.
Because of the change, all cases reported after 9 a.m. on Friday through the weekend will now be reported on Mondays, which will result in what looks like a spike in cases on Monday, Holzschuh said.
As of Tuesday, 43,293 Johnson County residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and 644 people have died from the disease. The county’s 14-day positive test rate was 3.7%.
Sarah Ritter and Steve Vockrodt contributed reporting.
