By Dion Lefler and Chance Swaim
Tribune News Service
WICHITA — Sedgwick County has become the latest in Kansas to order an array of businesses to shut down and most workers to stay home in the ongoing battle against the coronavirus and COVID-19, pending a decision from the county’s local health officer.
In a special meeting late Monday afternoon, the county commission, acting as the Board of Health, recommended a widespread closure of business in and around Wichita for a period of 30 days starting Wednesday.
To take effect, the local health officer, Garold Minns, would need to sign off on the order.
Commissioner Lacey Cruse said the order is necessary, in part, because the county doesn’t have a good handle on how the disease is spreading locally because testing is severely limited.
“We won’t have an economy if we don’t have people. And I think that it’s important to understand that people are our most valuable resources,” Cruse said.
The ordinance is nearly identical to the stay-at-home orders issued earlier in Kansas City suburbs and exurbs including Johnson, Wyandotte, Douglas and Leavenworth counties.
On Monday, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly announced an executive order banning gatherings of more than 10 people across the state. So far, the coronavirus has been more prevalent in those areas than in south-central Kansas.
But officials acknowledge that due to supply shortages, they’ve been unable to test sufficiently to establish the extent of COVID-19 in the Wichita area.
The disease has now entered a phase of community spread, meaning that residents appear to be catching it from each other, in contrast to the earliest local cases that were caused by exposure on a cruise ship vacation or imported directly from other states where the disease has been more widespread.
As of 2:30 p.m. Monday, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported 82 cases of COVID-19 including two deaths. The cases are spread across 16 of the state’s 105 counties, led by Johnson County, 32 cases, and Wyandotte County, 16 cases.
Sedgwick County had three positive tests as of Monday, according to County Manager Tom Stolz.
Local hospital leaders told county commissioners on Monday there could be as many as 1,000 cases in the Wichita area, Commission Chair Pete Meitzner said.
“They believe that the virus is alive in our community,” Meitzner said of Wesley Healthcare and Ascension Via Christi, Wichita’s largest hospital systems.
Local law enforcement will be empowered to enforce the order, but no penalty — civil or criminal — has been set.
Some enforcement decisions will rest with local authorities, depending on their city municipal codes, Stolz said.
He said he’s been in contact with Sheriff Jeff Easter and Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay, and they both indicated they don’t have the personnel resources or desire to run harsh crackdowns enforcing the order.
Stolz assured the commission the sheriff’s deputies will not be actively pulling people over to check whether they’re supposed to be out and about.
The commission acted after the Sedgwick County Medical Society, representing 1,250 physicians, sent a letter calling for a “shelter-in-place order that would be reassessed in two weeks.”
“Though Sedgwick County is fortunate to have only a few confirmed cases of COVID-19 thus far, that is unlikely to last long,” said the letter, signed by society board president Patricia Wyatt-Harris. “Because a surge of new cases could quickly overwhelm our hospital systems and put citizens’ lives at risk, it is critical to take action now to decrease local spread.”
The Sedgwick County ordinance includes a list of exemptions for critical governmental functions, services and industries. Health care and public safety top the list of exemptions, with carve-outs for health workers, police, firefighters, paramedics and other emergency responders.
People will still be allowed to walk their dogs and take part in other outdoor activities as long as they observe social distancing, which means keeping a 6-foot buffer between people.
Parks will remain open, but school playgrounds will not. Fishing and other food-gathering activities are also allowed.
Restaurants will be allowed to provide products on a pick-up or delivery basis only, to discourage crowds from gathering for nonessential activity.
Most entertainment venues and other leisure activities are already shut down.
People will also be allowed to go to the grocery store or deliver provisions to family or friends. Child care facilities would be open but limited to 10 people at a time in a confined space.
Commissioner Michael O’Donnell said the county will need to get further guidance from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment on the rules for child care.
Businesses in the food-supply chain, including grocery stores, dollar stores, gas stations and mini-marts, will be allowed to remain open, along with auto shops, businesses that sell pet supplies and other businesses deemed necessary for the safe functioning of society.
Plumbers, electricians, painters and construction workers are exempt, as are many professionals such as lawyers and accountants. Many area professionals have already taken steps for them and their employees to work remotely from home as much as possible.
Aerospace and other manufacturing plants will continue to operate those assembly lines, with workers directed to keep as much separation between themselves and co-workers as possible.
The county also wrote in an exemption for church-based relief efforts providing food and other supplies to homebound residents. The one added exemption to the ordinance passed in the Kansas City area was adding leaders and employees of religious institutions to the list of people allowed to go to work.
Commissioners took action a day after the county health officer, University of Kansas physician Garold Minns, urged a relatively cautious approach because of the economic damage that could come with a lengthy and widespread closure.
But Minns, dean of the KU Medical School in Wichita, also cautioned that if a stay-at-home order were to become necessary, it should be comprehensive and not contain so many exemptions that the majority of people could go about their routine business.
“We know it’s going to get worse. We know that. We just don’t know how long it is going to take,” Commissioner Jim Howell said.
He said it’s important to continue monitoring the situation daily to make sure the hospitals don’t get overwhelmed. He said these kinds of measures will likely last three months.
The recommendation passed 3-2, with Howell and O’Donnell voting against it. Howell said he needed more data, and O’Donnell said he wanted Minns to make the decision on his own.
Commissioner David Dennis echoed concerns about a lack of testing in Sedgwick County.
“Without testing, we don’t know the extent of the problem here in Sedgwick County and that’s a big problem,” Dennis said.
Elisha Yaghmai, a Wichita physician and president of FreeState Healthcare, said a shortage of testing materials across the country severely limits what strategies communities can deploy to fight coronavirus. With more test kits, Sedgwick County could take a more targeted approach, Yaghmai said.
But the tests aren’t available and it’s unclear when and if those will ever become available.
“Until we can come up with a better approach from a testing and epidemiology perspective, and since we don’t know when that’s coming, in the short term we may very well need to move to just the stay-at-home scenario to try to protect who we can protect,” Yaghmai said.