Four Corners Health District confirmed 61 new cases of the novel coronavirus from Sept. 17-24, the most cases in a single week since the start of the pandemic. Between Sept. 18-25, Seward County accounted for 38 new cases in the district, including 15 confirmed cases between Sept. 24-25 alone.
Laura McDougall, Four Corners executive director, said that these new cases haven't come from specific events or gatherings. Instead, they're the result of community transmission that is then exposed to family clusters at home.
In the first month that schools opened for in-person classes, McDougall said that only three cases were confirmed among school-aged children from kindergarten-12th grade. That number doubled on Sept. 24 and more students entered quarantine protocol the following the day.
“We did a ton of quarantining in schools today,” McDougall said. “That's not just Seward County, that's happening all over. Not sure if it ties back to schools because it's hard to say and I'm not sure if all the kids show symptoms.”
With those new cases, Seward County has accounted for 261 total confirmed cases of coronavirus. Of those, 145 have recovered.
Four Corners Health District recently began measuring by cases per million per day, as that reflects frequency of cases based on county population. Seward County registered at 190 cases per million per day in the Sept. 25 health update. McDougall said at the most recent health briefing that number should be closer to 50. In the week of Sept. 17-23, Seward County registered a positivity rate of 10.7% with 20 positives out of 187 total tests.
The county's risk dial moved closer towards the “high” (orange) section with a 1.88 on Sept. 25, up from 1.81 the previous week.
Thirteen Seward County residents with coronavirus are currently hospitalized and one is on a ventilator, according to the Four Corners dashboard.
“We're seeing that there's one person positive, it's a name we haven't seen, then what will happen is we'll contact them and it's often they don't have any idea where they got it,” McDougall said. “Then they'll go home and give it to family members. Best friend, boyfriend, whoever. It's whoever they spend a lot of their time with. Usually their close contacts and family members.
“Ultimately, we're not sure where they come from but then they gave it to their family members.”
While the lack of clusters or outbreaks encouraged McDougall, the growing number of cases and possible asymptomatic carriers in the community cause significant concern.
“It worries me that we have people out there that could be asymptomatic transmitters of this and they could be unaware they're spreading it to other people,” she said. “I feel like we had our finger stuck in the dike trying to hold back the flood and we're plugging the hole as fast as we can.”
