Wednesday’s sharp spike in Lyon County’s coronavirus caseload demonstrated the strain on the county’s contact tracing and disease investigation staff.
On KVOE’s Newsmaker segment Thursday, Lyon County Public Health Incident Commander Renee Hively said the 89 new cases — reflecting 65 cases investigated locally and 24 by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment — underscores the staffing situation. Public Health currently can have a maximum of six disease investigators. It’s short on that amount now with some contact tracers going back to school or taking new positions, so Public Health reached out to KDHE for help.
Hively says work is underway now to rectify those data sets. Another spike in KDHE-investigated numbers appears unlikely.
Between Aug. 30 and Wednesday, Lyon County Public Health had been reporting anywhere from 10-40 cases per reporting period. Hively says community spread is in full effect now with increased COVID-19 traffic over the past month-plus.
Part of that has to do with the start of school. Part of that also has to do with the sheer number of community activities, and Hively says it’s impossible to say whether any of the local or area events are “super-spreaders” because people have been attending several events every weekend. She says event organizers have been diligent in setting up mitigation strategies and she encouraged organizers of upcoming events to continue that approach.
Increased vaccination numbers have also helped. Lyon County is now up to 57.3 percent of its population ages 12-plus fully vaccinated and 48.9 percent of all county residents fully vaccinated.
