Lyon County Public Health is still busy dealing with coronavirus, whether through tests, questions, raw data — or robocalls.
The question of contact tracing procedures is being discussed after a recent robocall saying a person traveled and was a close contact of a coronavirus patient. Millbern says Public Health has not used any automated calling, but there could come a time when it develops an opt-in system including phone calls or texts. Chase, Coffey, Greenwood, Morris and Osage counties also do not use automated calling for contact tracing, and Millbern says KDHE is not using that approach — although some counties have gone to automated messaging. For now, people receiving contact tracing robocalls should hang up and call their county health departments for verification.
When it comes to recent statistics, Millbern says there was an increase in cases before the Labor Day weekend, notably in education.
Millbern says trends from the Labor Day weekend will likely take 10-14 days to show themselves, just ahead of the Emporia Public Schools’ tentative debut of gating criteria for determining classroom education models and extracurricular activity plans.
Speaking of stats, Millbern said Public Health tracks a wide range of data, but it puts a lot of emphasis on two specific data points.
Millbern also mentioned the Kansas Department of Health and Environment plan to announce cluster sites beginning Wednesday. As KVOE News has reported, KDHE will report cluster locations with at least five cases except in private industry, where 20 cases are needed. Raw data will be announced, regardless of whether they are connected in an outbreak fashion. Businesses will also be named until they are case-free for 28 days. Public Health has not determined whether it will issue county-specific cluster information.
