Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health to end COVID-19 updates

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After April 26, Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health will cease updating its COVID-19 data dashboard and sending out email updates each week.

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LDCPH had planned to continue its updates until the COVID-19 national public health emergency ended on May 11, Daniel Smith, spokesperson for the health department, said via email Wednesday. But President Joe Biden on Monday signed a bipartisan congressional resolution to bring the national emergency response to a close a few weeks early.

“Our informatics team will continue to monitor things and we may occasionally present COVID data if there are surges, similar to how we approached the recent Norovirus spike,” Smith said.

The updates had included the number of LMH Health inpatients who have COVID-19. At the time of the final update on that data, released Wednesday, April 5, LMH had seven COVID-positive inpatients.

The end of the data comes almost exactly three years after the hospital reported its first case of COVID-19 on April 6, 2020.

LMH Health stopped requiring masks in most areas of its facilities effective March 13, and LDCPH followed suit on March 20.

Data about viral genes detected in wastewater from the city’s Kansas River Wastewater Treatment Plant is available via Verily at this link. Read more about that effort at this link.

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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.

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