Coronavirus

Lextran employee tests presumptive positive for COVID-19

A Lextran employee tested presumptive positive for COVID-19, the transit agency announced in a Thursday press release.

Lextran officials are still waiting for final confirmation of the test from the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, said Carrie Butler, Lextran’s general manager.

Other employees who may have been in contact with the worker have been asked to voluntarily self-quarantine, according to Austin Hughes, Lextran’s marketing coordinator.

Due to health privacy concerns, Butler said she couldn’t say if the employee was hospitalized or if they were in a position that had sustained contact with the public.

“We’re wishing them a full and speedy recovery,” Butler said.

Lextran has already altered bus routes and frequency while also increasing cleaning on city buses, and Butler said Friday that she doesn’t anticipate any coming changes. But with the constantly evolving coronavirus conditions, those plans could change at any moment.

“We’re doing our best to keep services where they are,” Butler said.

The department is trying to maintain bus ridership at levels similar to a typical Sunday, when bus traffic is low relative to the rest of the week, she said.

So far ridership has stayed around those Sunday levels, Butler said, so people have been observing social distancing on the city’s public transit.

This story was originally published March 27, 2020 at 2:08 PM.

Rick Childress
Lexington Herald-Leader
Rick Childress covers Eastern Kentucky for the Herald-Leader. The Lexington native and University of Kentucky graduate first joined the paper in 2016 as an agate desk clerk in the sports section and in 2020 covered higher education during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He spent much of 2021 covering news and sports for the Klamath Falls Herald and News in rural southern Oregon before returning to Kentucky in 2022.
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