BY JUSTIN SABATA
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A recent surge of COVID-19 has affected the state with over 3,800 new cases being reported Tuesday by The New York Times<\/a>. During Monday\u2019s county commission meeting, Ellis County Director of Health Services Jason Kennedy explained the area has not seen a similar surge though cases are still prevalent. \u201cI will say Ellis County has fared fairly well,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cWe saw our peak really early on in the summer. We\u2019ve kind of just had a consistent increase.\u201d On Monday, the department announced 129 active cases of COVID-19 in Ellis County with an average of 12 new cases a day for the past week. These statistics have been consistent since the spike that occurred in late August. \u201cWe\u2019ve averaged around, between eight and 14 (new) cases a day for our seven-day averages for, really, the last couple of months,\u201d Kennedy said. The overall percent-of-postives rate has continued to increase at 13.1% on Monday (12.8% last Wednesday). Fortunately, hospitalizations have decreased due in part to a decrease in cases in long-term care facilities. As of Monday, there were three active hospitalizations in the county. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen a drastic reduction in hospitalizations because it\u2019s passed through the long-term care facilities,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201dAnd the long-term care facilities are now on kind of a recovery status.\u201d Kennedy also praised the staff of these facilities and their efforts to reduce the spread of the virus. \u201cThe long-term cares have done a phenomenal job,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cI\u2019ve got the utmost respect for the job they\u2019ve done, and for what the patients and families have endured.\u201d Continuing on hospitalizations, Kennedy described his skepticism in reports on the current state of the Kansas healthcare system. \u201cKansas’s healthcare system is not overwhelmed,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cI don\u2019t see it completely being overwhelmed, I don\u2019t see that as a conceivable probability.\u201d As reported by the KDHE<\/a> on Sunday, 40% of ICU beds are still available statewide including 88% of total ventilators. Regionally, according to Lawrence Journal-World<\/a>, areas like southwest Kansas have reached total ICU bed capacity. The holiday season could mean a continued increase in cases. However, the health director observed responsible measures being taken on Halloween weekend and encouraged the same for the upcoming holidays. \u201cJust make good choices, make smart choices – same thing as people did on Halloween,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cI saw them really, you know, people spaced out well, they tried to distance as much as possible. I saw mask use – I saw people, you know, making good choices.\u201d BY JUSTIN SABATA A recent surge of COVID-19 has affected the state with over 3,800 new cases being reported Tuesday by The New York Times.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":56080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13675,11],"tags":[13713,1759,69,106,12479,103,290],"class_list":["post-57035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-news","tag-covid","tag-ellis-county","tag-fhsu","tag-fort-hays-state-university","tag-justin-sabata","tag-tiger-media-network","tag-tmn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/elliscovid.png?fit=1307%2C873&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57036,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57035\/revisions\/57036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"