Coronavirus updates: Kansas reports 159 more cases and five additional deaths

The Eagle has compiled a list of updates on the coronavirus pandemic for Wednesday, June 3. For updates from Tuesday, click here.

New numbers in Kansas

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported an increase of 159 cases and five deaths, bringing the totals to 10,170 and 222.

The KDHE reports figures on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Clusters jumped by seven, to 135, from the last report. The clusters account for 5,244, or about 52% of the total cases, and 152 deaths, or roughly 56%. Clusters at meatpacking facilities, where federal efforts added additional testing, have the bulk of cluster cases, with 2,767. There have also been 10 deaths associated with those clusters. The most cluster deaths occurred at long-term care facilities, which have attributed to 117 deaths.

Sedgwick County cases climbed by 16 to 598.

Sedgwick County’s overnight jump

The Sedgwick County Health Department reported an increase of 12 cases and no deaths, bringing the totals to 616 and 21.

Discrepancies between county and state numbers can be due to confirmed cases from one health department not yet finalized with the other, officials have said.

Of the total cases, 432 are considered to be recovered, meaning its been 72 hours since symptoms stopped or 10 days after symptoms started, whichever is longer.

Sedgwick County looking to randomly test for COVID-19

The Sedgwick County Health Department wants to randomly test people for COVID-19 in June and July in order to better understand the virus’ spread in the community.

Starting next week, the health department will work with a call center to contact 1,600 people and ask them to be tested, regardless of if they have symptoms. The tests use nose swabs will be conducted June 18-20 at a drive-through site. The results are expected to come back a few days later and will not tell if someone was previously infected.

The health department plans to repeat the effort in mid-July for comparison.

This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 9:30 AM.