Eastern Kansas county declares COVID emergency after hospital runs out of ventilators
An eastern Kansas County has declared an emergency after the local hospital ran out of ventilators while treating patients with the coronavirus.
The Lyon County Board of County Commissioners in Emporia, Kansas, announced Friday afternoon that they were declaring a local emergency after the local hospital, Newman Regional Health, asked for two additional ventilators. An emergency had to be declared in order to order this “critical resource” from the state’s Emergency Operations Center.
The announcement came a day after Gov. Laura Kelly issued a new disaster declaration, suspending a series of rules and regulations to help Kansas health care facilities respond more rapidly as COVID-19 patients threaten to overwhelm hospitals struggling with staffing shortages.
Since the pandemic began nearly two years ago, Lyon County has seen 7,171 COVID-19 cases. The latest update added 209 new cases to the count, according to the county health department. So far, 98 people have died.
As of Friday, when the numbers were last updated, 481 people in the county still had active COVID-19 cases. Of those, 138 were breakthrough cases, or infections in people who had been vaccinated.
The omicron variant accounted for at least 156 of the county’s coronavirus infections.
This story was originally published January 9, 2022 at 9:28 AM.
