Breaking lots of rules, including the stay-at-home order and social distancing order, a crowd in Turner watched illegal street racing on Sunday, April 19, near 51st and Richland, near Speaker Road in Kansas City, Kansas.
More than 100 people attended, and food trucks also showed up at the site near railroad property, according to a local resident. The racing often takes place Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday.
The resident was particularly concerned about the children in the group, as people were standing close together and not wearing face masks or any protective gear.
The stay-at-home order was issued by local and state authorities in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, a highly contagious infection.
Sometimes Wyandotte County residents have been good about observing social distancing and staying at home, and sometimes they haven’t.
Today, Wyandotte County got an overall “C” grade from the Unacast social distancing scoreboard at https://www.unacast.com/covid19/social-distancing-scoreboard. On the up side, Wyandotte County got an “A” today for greater than 70 percent reduction in nonessential visits, but on the down side, Wyandotte County received an “F” today for less than 40 percent decrease in encounters density, compared to the national baseline.
On April 19, Wyandotte County got a “D” in social distancing, according to Unacast. Wyandotte County had less than a 40 percent decrease in encounters density compared to the national baseline for April 19, according to Unacast, for an “F” grade that day.
The Unacast website uses aggregate cell phone information to measure how much an area’s residents are traveling.
Harvesters—The Community Food Network will hold a free mobile food distribution in Wyandotte County at the site of the former Indian Springs mall, 4601 State Ave., Kansas City, Kansas, beginning at 10 a.m. Thursday, April 30.
The distribution will provide food to feed 1,200 households and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis until all food has been distributed. Each household will receive a box of nonperishable items, a box of fresh produce and some frozen meat items.
Residents have been posting on social media that they planned to get to the food distribution site by 7 a.m. or earlier.
The distribution is designed for residents of Wyandotte County and is held in cooperation with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County. Kansas City, Kansas. Police will help direct traffic.
Wyandotte County residents should enter the distribution site off of 38th and State Avenue, head south to Orville Avenue and follow that west to the former mall parking lot. Volunteers wearing masks and gloves will load food into cars.
Harvesters normally distributes food through its network of partner agencies, but is holding this mobile distribution to help ease the burden on its network trying to meet the tremendous increase in demand for food assistance as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our agencies are seeing anywhere from 30 to 40 percent more people seeking assistance,” Valerie Nicholson-Watson, Harvesters’ president and CEO, said. “We’re committed to feeding hungry families and seniors in our community. We currently have an abundance of fresh produce that needs to be distributed quickly, and we know there are so many who are in need of immediate help.”
“COVID-19 continues to challenge the health and financial well-being of our community,” Mayor-CEO David Alvey said. “Not only do our residents face the risk of infection, but many lack the financial resources to pay for food, rent, and utilities. The assistance offered by Harvesters will help many of our most vulnerable to put food on the table, and we are deeply grateful.”
Part of the food distributed at this mobile site includes food items received through the USDA’s disaster food program for COVID-19. Additional food from this USDA program is being distributed through Harvesters’ regular network of food pantries and mobile distributions.
A Harvesters spokesman said that she hoped that the Harvesters food distribution this week can help fill the gap for families who might have received food from the Kansas City, Kansas, school district, which has canceled this week’s school lunch program because of illness.
Financial donations are really critical now, the spokesman stated.
More mobile distributions will be added as needed, according to Harvesters. Plans are underway to hold an additional large food distribution in Jackson County, Missouri, in early May. Additional details will be announced soon.
Anyone who needs food assistance throughout Harvesters’ 26-county service area can find a food pantry, food kitchen or mobile food distribution near their home by entering their zip code in the agency locator on the “Get Help” page of Harvesters’ website: www.harvesters.org.
Kansas reported 3,328 positive COVID-19 cases from 75 counties today, an increase of 154 cases. (KDHE map)Dr. Lee Norman, Kansas health secretary, said he expects cases to start declining. This chart showed new cases in blue and total cases reported by date diagnosed in yellow. (KDHE chart)This KDHE chart showed the date symptoms started in blue, and the date the patients were diagnosed in yellow. (KDHE chart)
Gov. Laura Kelly said today in a news conference that she is moving forward with plans to restart the economy.
She said the state is looking at metrics that would allow some restrictions to be lifted on May 4, and right now, it appears that it would be safe to do that. While the governor did not yet announce the details of the reopening plans, she is working on plans that are to be announced later this week, she added.
Besides downward trends in hospitalizations and deaths, the state also has made some progress on the acquisition of testing, helping the state ramp up its testing to a more robust level than before, Gov. Kelly said.
When the state lifts the stay-at-home order, the local communities would be free to issue their own orders that apply to their counties.
“When we lift the statewide stay-at-home order, we then reauthorize the local counties to take our guidelines and be more restrictive if they think it’s warranted in their particular environment,” Gov. Kelly said.
That authority will go back to the counties to put in measures that are more restrictive than the ones statewide, she said. The state still has the authority to put in place measures that override what is done in a local county, although the state doesn’t want to have to do that, according to the governor.
Gov. Kelly said there may have been more testing going on than has been reported because private labs were doing 80 percent of the testing and did not always report negative tests to the state, only positive results.
Kansas reported 3,328 positive COVID-19 cases from 75 counties today, an increase of 154 cases, according to Gov. Kelly. The state now has 120 total deaths.
Two more deaths were reported today in Wyandotte County from people who had tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Unified Government Health Department webpage.
In addition, there was a death of an inmate from the Lansing Correctional Facility over 50 years old with underlying health conditions, according to state officials.
Dr. Lee Norman, Kansas secretary of health, said today that they will be using the number of hospitalizations, number of deaths per capita and number of deaths per positive cases in determining whether the state is ready to reopen.
He said those numbers are decreasing and that is encouraging. While there will be an uptick in the number of positive cases, he said things are not getting worse in reality.
While there were 378 positive COVID-19 cases reported at the Kansas meatpacking plants, so far there were no deaths, he said, and possibly one hospitalization. Most of those positive cases are asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic, he said. He said the counts would peak and then drop.
When asked why the state didn’t reopen immediately, Dr. Norman said there were still a lot of COVID-19 cases out there, and it would be imprudent to reopen now, taking a big leap before taking a more measured approach. “You have to walk before you can run,” he said.
At the current run rate, they have the ability to test everyone who’s symptomatic now, he added.
Gov. Kelly said it was important to have in-depth discussions with all stakeholders, allowing them to have input, before lifting the order.
Gov. Kelly said today she had a call with the White House and Kansas will receive equipment that will sterilize N95 masks and make them safe to use for workers who originally used them. They will extend the life of the masks up to 20 times, she said. Up to 80,000 masks a day can be sanitized by this system, she said. The system will go into operation next week, she added.
The governor also said she has been gathering input from different businesses, legislators, health care representatives and local communities on reopening the state. She will announce a plan on Thursday.
State officials also announced a new Kansas COVID-19 website at https://covid.ks.gov/. The website includes not just medical and case information, but also information about job assistance, unemployment benefits, as well as social services that are available.
Dr. Norman said the state is monitoring 55 clusters, including 18 in long-term care facilities with 401 cases and 68 deaths.
Also, there are clusters in two group living arrangements with 28 cases and zero deaths; Lansing Correctional Facility, 115 cases and one death; two health care facilities, 16 cases, zero deaths; six religious gatherings, 99 cases and eight deaths; 21 private companies, 170 cases and four deaths; and six meatpacking facilities, 378 cases and zero deaths.
Testing and contact tracing will be the key to reopening, he said.
There are 20 existing KDHE staff who are being trained to do contact tracing in Lyon, Ford, Finney and Seward counties, he said. Then they will bring in about 400 volunteers to do case tracking, in groups of 50, he said.
Dr. Norman said a toxicologist and emergency medicine physician at the Kansas Poison Control Center has seen a more than 40 percent increase in cleaning chemical cases, including a person who drank a cleaning product because of the advice he received. Dr. Norman said they are trying to present counter-messages to ingesting cleaning chemicals.
Gov. Kelly said another round of $320 billion federal funding for small business loans was approved today, and she encouraged Kansas businesses to put in their applications as soon as possible, if they have not already done so.
Dr. Norman said it is likely that even when it reopens, society probably will change the way they interact in business and groups of people. Social distancing probably will remain for a long time.
Some of the counties’ reports, according to the KDHE: Ford (Dodge City area), 516 cases; Johnson County, 440 cases; Seward (Liberal area), 349 cases; Sedgwick (Wichita area), 339 cases; Leavenworth County, 184 cases; Finney (Garden City area), 175 cases; Lyon County (Emporia area), 147 cases; Shawnee, 105 cases; Coffey (Burlington area), 48 cases; Douglas (Lawrence area), 48 cases; Riley County (Manhattan area), 45 cases; Reno County, 26; Labette County, 21; McPherson County, 20; Saline County, 19; Montgomery County, 16; Butler County, 14; Wabaunsee County, 15; Franklin County, 12; and Geary County, 11.
