Riley County reports 20 new COVID cases in one week

Hailey Phillips, The Manhattan Mercury, Kan.
·3 min read

Jun. 9—Riley County on Wednesday recorded 20 new coronavirus cases since last week.

That is down more than half from the last update on June 2, when the county confirmed 43 new cases.

Riley County's total Wednesday was 6,613 cases, said county spokeswoman Alice Massimi. Of those, 24 were active and 6,546 had recovered since the pandemic began in March 2020. An additional 62 people had recovered from the virus since June 2. Forty-three people have died after testing positive for the virus.

Ascension Via Christi Hospital in Manhattan had four patients with coronavirus, as of Wednesday. Two were in the intensive care unit.

The county's rate of positive tests went down 6.6 percentage points from the previous week. From May 30-June 5, the county recorded a rate of 3.4%. From May 23-29, the rate was 10%.

As a reason for the decline, Massimi said the health department tested less people. She also said the department worked with the Manhattan-Ogden school district "to contain one of the outbreaks in the area."

When asked, she didn't say whether this involved the Manhattan High football team.

The team paused all team activities until June 15 after "several" positive tests. An outbreak involves five or more cases associated with a particular group or event.

Massimi said she doesn't know how many outbreaks are in the area. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) hadn't reported any outbreaks in the area Wednesday.

The Riley County Health Department had fully vaccinated 21,106 people, as of Wednesday. RCHD said 1,040 people had received at least one dose of the vaccine Wednesday. This doesn't include vaccines given out by the hospital, grocery pharmacies and other local entities.

In total, KDHE said 30,324 people or 40.8% of Riley County residents have received at least one dose. KDHE said 26,790 or 36% of Riley County residents are fully vaccinated, as of Wednesday. The U.S. Census Bureau said Riley County's population in 2019 was 74,232.

Additionally, Riley County recorded five new cases of a "variant of interest" from last Friday to Wednesday, according to KDHE. Riley County has recorded a total of 13 variant cases.

Scientists first detected this variant of interest, called the B.1.617.2, in India. This is a variant with "specific genetic markers" that has shown a predicted increase in transmission or illness severity, KDHE said.

KDHE sequences coronavirus samples after receiving them from the county to confirm it's a variant. This means that the variant confirmation is delayed following the person's initial coronavirus diagnosis.

Since Friday, Pottawatomie County added one case of the India variant for a total of six variant cases. Geary County stayed at 17 variant cases.

In total, Geary County reported eight new coronavirus cases since Monday for 3,514 Wednesday. Pottawatomie County's case total also increased by eight for 1,958 on Wednesday.

Since Monday, Kansas recorded 401 new coronavirus cases, 26 hospitalizations and three deaths, according to KDHE. The state recorded a total of 315,500 cases, 10,849 hospitalizations and 5,103 deaths since the pandemic started, KDHE said Wednesday.