By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
As the number of cases of coronavirus continues to rise in Ellis County, the health department is continuing its efforts to monitor those impacted.
In less than a week, Ellis County went from zero confirmed cases of coronavirus to four after the health department announced two more confirmed cases Tuesday.
At Monday’s county commission meeting, Ellis County Health Services Director Jason Kennedy updated the commission on the condition of the first two patients.
Kennedy said the first two patients — a man in his 30s and a woman in her 40s — are both doing well.
“We follow up with them every single day,” Kennedy said. “We also, immediately upon notification, we notify anyone who was a contact.”
According to Kennedy, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment define contacts as people who have been within six feet for longer than 10 minutes.
Anyone who is determined as a contact is then put on a 14-day quarantine.
Kennedy said they do have a “few” people who have been in quarantine because of their contact with the first two patients. He said they have been following up with those individuals as well and, “currently everyone involved is doing really well.”
In Tuesday’s press release from the health department, officials said the latest two cases are a female and a male in their 50s and 60s. These two cases are connected to one another, while the first two were not.
Like the first two cases, the latest cases were not connected to travel to an area restricted by the KDHE, the health department said.
“We do, at this point, believe that at least their infection was acquired locally,” Kennedy said of the first two cases Monday.
The Ellis County Health Department also said Tuesday the latest cases were identified through contact tracing done by the health department.
"We have contact tracing that goes on year round with other infectious diseases," Kennedy said. "It’s just not quite as labor intensive.”
Under KDHE rules, Kennedy said those testing positive for coronavirus have to go into mandatory isolation for seven days after starting symptoms or 72-hours after having a fever.
“When the guidelines were first put out, it was kind of 14 days as a blanket. Now if you have a test and you are symptomatic, it’s seven days post-symptom or 72 hours post fever,” he said.
People who have come in contact with someone with the coronavirus but who haven’t had symptoms need to go into 14-day quarantine, Kennedy added.
“The latency period of the virus is two to 14 days,” he said. “If, during those 14 days, they show no symptoms or any reason to test, then they would be released from quarantine.”
Kennedy said the KDHE definition of quarantine and isolation is generally the same thing.
“You really can have no outside contact with other people,” he said. “You can go outside of your home as long as (it’s) solo exercise, something in your back yard, something like that. It’s really that not having any contact with other people.”
As of Tuesday, state health officials reported 1,426 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 69 deaths statewide.
The KDHE issues its daily update at 11 a.m.