By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — There has been a spike in the case count of COVID-19 in Reno County. As of 9 a.m. Wednesday, there are now 105 cases active in the county. The latest numbers are due to a cluster at Hutchinson Correctional Facility.
"They have been doing a lot of testing," said Karen Hammersmith with the Health Department. "The numbers come from a number that came back from their testing. I don't know a whole lot, because we're still in the process of investigating that. The cases that came in overnight, 53 of the 57 cases that changed on the dashboard were related to Hutchinson Correctional Facility. I don't know if those are inmates or employees. We are still doing testing."
Two other clusters also have been identified at Tyson in South Hutchinson and a nursing home in Pretty Prairie. Hammersmith said they may later be able to break the numbers out so people can know which cases are public and which are not, but they aren't that far yet.
"That is something that we may be able to look at on the reporting dashboard, to keep that separate," Hammersmith said. "I think that is probably a good idea if that's something that can be done. I think it would probably be a manual adjustment, but we could do that."
Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Dr. Lee Norman showed concern for what a spike at HCF could mean as one of his justifications for advising for the cancellation of the Kansas State Fair earlier this year.
"Once it gets into prison settings and nursing homes, sometimes those numbers can escalate, especially in a prison where you have so many people living in those close quarters. That's why you always want to watch any virus or disease process that gets there and try to make sure it doesn't have wide spread, but it's very hard not to."
This is the first day since the beginning of the pandemic with over 100 active cases at the same time.