Lyon County reports 89 positives, one death in Wednesday update

The Emporia Gazette

A new confirmed death, along with 89 new positives and 53 recoveries were reported in Lyon County Wednesday afternoon, bringing the county’s active cases back up to 126.

The new case load includes 65 newly reported positives and 24 cases that were erroneously omitted from the original number, according to public health officials.

“As cases in Lyon County increased, some of those cases were sent to the KDHE COVID-19 Response to be investigated,” Lyon County Public Health said in a post to social media. “Those cases were not assigned to Lyon County and were missing from our dashboard. That data has now been corrected. Our new cases include 24 older cases and 65 recently diagnosed positives.”

Out of 126 active cases, 17 are considered to be breakthrough cases at this time. Of those 17 cases, six patients received Janssen, eight received Moderna and three received Pfizer.

The caseload includes one patient under the age of 1; 14 patients between the ages of 1 - 11; 13 patients ages 12 - 17; 21 ages 18 - 23; 13 patients ages 24 - 29; 19 patients ages 30 - 39; 18 patients ages 40 - 49, 10 patients ages 50 - 59, five patients ages 60 - 69; seven patients ages 70 - 79; three patients ages 80 - 90 and two patients over the age of 90.

Eight Lyon County residents are currently hospitalized.

As of Wednesday, the county has seen 5,073 positives since March 2020, including 4,858 recoveries and 89 deaths.

Wednesday’s report comes as the state confirmed the death of a Kansas middle school student due to COVID-19. According to the Associated Press, the child’s death would be the first reported COVID-19 death of someone aged 10 - 17 in Kansas and only the third reported for someone under 18.

Education Commissioner Randy Watson disclosed the death during a Zoom meeting of a task force on COVID-19 safety measures in public schools appointed by Gov. Laura Kelly.

“On an extremely sad note, I was just informed ... that we did have a student, a middle school student, pass away of COVID just in the last maybe day,” Watson said.

No other details were provided.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported 11 new COVID-19 clusters at schools. The department’s data showed 72 active school outbreaks across Kansas, with 537 cases and one hospitalization, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported.

The heath department’s presentation to the governor’s workgroup noted the “drastic increase in outbreaks this week (is) likely due in part to improved reporting.”