(Photo courtesy WCF)
UPDATED: Thursday, 3:08 p.m.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment says there were no variants of coronavirus at Winfield Correctional Facility this week.
In an interview with KMBC TV in Kansas City Tuesday morning, KDHE Secretary Dr. Lee Norman said genomic sequencing tests were underway at the Winfield Correctional Facility to see if a sudden spread of the virus was linked to variant strains of the virus.
Thursday afternoon, Kristi Zears, the Director of Communications for KDHE, told KSOK-NewsCow no variants have been found.
“After conducting testing in the Winfield Correctional Facility, neither of the CDC variants were found,” Zears said. “We will continue monitoring , evaluating and working with the CDC.”
According to the Kansas Department of Corrections Thursday, there are now 126 total cases of COVID-19 at the Winfield Correctional Facility. Of the cases, 14 are staff.
Tuesday, KDOC reported 77 total cases for WCF.
As of Wednesday’s KDHE report, total cases of the virus in Cowley County since the pandemic began number 3,375 — an increase of 50 since Monday’s report.
From Tuesday:
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment is investigating an outbreak of coronavirus at the Winfield Correctional Facility.
In an interview with KMBC TV in Kansas City Tuesday morning, KDHE Secretary Dr. Lee Norman said genomic sequencing tests are underway at the Winfield Correctional Facility to see if the sudden spread is linked to variant strains of the virus.
“There’s one fascinating situation with a correctional facility, a jail, actually, where they haven’t had any COVID-19 for weeks and then a whole cluster of cases broke out,” Norman said. “We did the epidemiologic tracking and found out that it came in through the community through the food services workers and then it from there to some other places.
“But it was very fast spread and we’re going to test everyone of those positive individuals with genomic sequencing.”
(Norman notes the outbreak at the 13:31 mark and identifies WCF as the correctional facility at the 20:10 mark.)
Norman said genomic sequencing tests are done by request when an outbreak breaks patterns of previous spread.
“They’re doing a great job of handling it,” Norman said about the WCF staff. “The thing that set off the alarm, of course, was the rapidity of the spread, which (goes) back to the U.K. variant or the South African variant and other things that worried us.”
According to the state, there are 77 cases of COVID-19 at Winfield Correctional Facility.
As of Monday, total cases of the virus in Cowley County since the pandemic began number 3,325. Cases increased by 76 from Friday through Monday.
“Another great example that why correctional facilities are congregate settings that need to be immunized, because it was brought into the correctional facility and then taken back out into the community, so the jail is not an island,” Norman said Tuesday morning.
Norman said more information about the WCF outbreak is expected to be released Wednesday.
Calls from KSOK-NewsCow to WCF were directed to Topeka.
