By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The first weekend of testing at the Kansas State Fairgrounds has netted around 200 tests for COVID-19. Though specific numbers were not yet available as of early Monday from official sources, Reno County Health Department director Nick Baldetti's back of the envelope calculation was 197 tests administered in the first Thursday, Friday and Saturday set of dates there.
"That 197 is not reflected, because we don't have the feed yet, on our COVID dashboard, so it does not feed into the total number of tests administered or any of those metrics yet," Baldetti said.
The rate of positive tests to total tests administered of the ones available to the dashboard is hovering around 6%. That's actually pretty good, according to Baldetti.
"Some of the literature is suggesting about a 10 to 12% case positive rate," Baldetti said. "Last week, the state of Kansas was at a 12%. From a scientific literature perspective, the state of Kansas was kind of right at the peak. Now, I believe that percentage upticked over the weekend."
That said, Baldetti fuly expects some of the Fairgrounds testing to net positive cases, but it would be an increase in that positive test rate that would be of concern to him.
"I would be monitoring and find concerns in a short period of time if we began to jump by about a two percentage tick or more," Baldetti said.
At this point, there are also still 41 tests from the regular health care system in Reno County that are also awaiting results.