Johnson County health official: Early test results ‘good news’ in coronavirus fight
Early results from Johnson County’s random community testing program show mitigation strategies appear to be working to reduce the spread of coronavirus, officials said Tuesday.
But Sanmi Areola, public health director, said it is still too early — and data is still too limited — to draw any definitive conclusions. He warned that residents must continue following social distancing requirements and abiding by the stay at home order — which leaders have said could be extended past next week.
“I will say that our tactics appear to have worked pretty well. But it is way too early to definitively say that. And it’s definitely way too early to roll back. We don’t want to lose the gains we have made,” Areola said.
Johnson County has launched its $400,000 program expanding community testing in order to better collect data on the outbreak of COVID-19. The county is inviting hundreds of randomly selected residents, who are supposed to be representative of the population, to be tested at a drive-thru location.
For the first round of testing on Friday, Areola said about 370 residents participated, including some people with symptoms of coronavirus and some without.
The county has received the test results for 330 of those residents. Of those, nine residents, or about 2.7%, tested positive for coronavirus, he said.
“That’s pretty good news,” Areola said. “You can look at that from the angle of that’s really the group that was asked to be home for 14 days or longer. That’s the group asked to stay home as long as possible. So as expected, those results were low.”
The residents who tested positive will be instructed to self-isolate. Anyone who has been in contact with them will be told to do the same.
The number of coronavirus cases continues to grow in Johnson County. As of Tuesday afternoon, the county had reported 318 positive cases and 16 deaths.
Out of the 3,169 tests that have been conducted, 10% have come back positive. Largely, testing in the county has been limited to high-risk residents who have needed to be hospitalized.
Areola hopes that testing a wider group will help the county better understand how the virus is spreading and whether mitigation strategies are working. The county plans to test at least 2,000 randomly selected residents in the coming weeks.
He said officials will not have a clear picture of the outbreak until all of the data is collected.
On Monday, Areola told the Johnson County Board of Commissioners that lifting the stay at home order “will depend on us being able to verify that what we are seeing is sustainable over time.”
“It’s tough to make decisions based on one data point,” he said.
Kansas’ statewide stay at home order expires April 19, although Gov. Laura Kelly has said it is likely to be extended. Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas and local leaders are discussing extending the metrowide stay at home orders for up to three more weeks.
Meanwhile, Johnson County has also collected data about the coronavirus outbreak through an online survey, which was available last week. Areola said more than 72,000 people responded, with about 1.5% reporting that they might have symptoms.
In addition to testing randomly selected residents, this week the county is starting to expand testing for nursing home staff and clients, as well as front-line workers, such as grocery store employees, delivery drivers and first responders.
