Unified Government Health Department officials went over the sports rules for the fall at the 5 pm. Thursday Unified Government Commission meeting, but there were no changes made.
Doug Bach, UG administrator, said at the end of the discussion that there would be more evaluation and review of the situation by doctors and there could be items that come back for additional discussion later.
Commissioner Brian McKiernan was one of the elected officials who called for more discussion and communication with the health officials, commissioners and community on the topic, and some other commissioners agreed.
Commissioner McKiernan said they have given the Health Department doctors an impossible task, asking them to keep everyone healthy and productive, in the face of a virus that doesn’t care what they do. He said it was necessary to keep talking to each other to reach a middle point.
Health officials are afraid that if students go outside the county to play sports, as some have already done, they will break the cohorts at their schools and potentially expose many others to the virus.
Commissioner Mike Kane voiced the concerns of some student athletes and asked about the UG Commission having authority over the health orders.
He said that last weekend, more than 2,000 high school wrestlers gathered at the Hy-Vee Arena in Kansas City, Missouri. Also, students have been playing baseball and other sports all summer long outside of Wyandotte County, he said.
When schools agreed to follow all the guidelines, he thought that was good. Then he heard Dr. Lee Norman, state health secretary, say that the decision would be made by each school district, he added.
“We’re already going outside the county,” Commissioner Kane said. Some youth attend school outside Wyandotte County. Some adults work outside the county. The Legends Outlets is open with all kinds of shoppers there, he said.
“The teens have done what they were asked to do,” Commissioner Kane said. One fifth-grader wore a mask even though it was 92 degrees outside, he said. “When schools follow those guidelines, I don’t know why any rumor would go out there, or why we would have a presentation like this, because it sounds like you’re setting up to shut this stuff down and I don’t like that at all.”
Commissioner Kane said the doctor should not be the one to make the decision. He thought there has been a decision that the county commissioners could override the doctor, he added.
He asked a question on Aug. 13 about teams playing outside the county, and the reply was that they couldn’t control what people do outside the county.
“Somebody needs to go out there and watch these kids, paying attention and talking to them,” he said. If it wasn’t a remote meeting, the commission chambers would have been filled with students, because they feel like they’re being dictated to, he said.
“Before we do anything, we better make sure that everyone knows what’s going on and something is happening,” he said. “We need to give our kids something. We tied them up for a long time.”
“The state doctor has already said it’s OK to leave it up to the school districts, and we should leave it up to the school districts,” Commissioner Kane said.
Dr. Allen Greiner, Wyandotte County chief medical officer, said he doesn’t believe there’s anything they can do to control activities outside of Wyandotte County.
“Some of it boils down to the real clear evidence we have that stay-at-home orders work for reducing spread and reducing hospitalizations and reducing deaths,” he said. “Masks do that as well.” They are seeing a reduction in cases in the last month, and they will see fewer deaths because of mask orders, he said, unless there is another variable to increase it.
If anyone is going to engage in anything that puts them within 6 feet of someone for more than 10 minutes, they should be wearing masks, he said. They are trying to promote mask and social distancing because it reduces spread, reduces hospitalizations and saves lives, he said.
If sports can be conducted in such a way that people can wear masks and social distance, it will reduce spread, and schools won’t have to be closed at a rate as fast as they would otherwise, Dr. Greiner said.
If a school is going to have a football game in Kansas, they have to have 10 practices before the game. The Health Department wasn’t aware that practices with close contact was occurring in Wyandotte County, and they weren’t wearing masks, he said. They just heard that about a week ago and that is where the conversation on Thursday night was coming from, he added.
Commissioner Kane asked if they were going to close The Legends or the professional soccer games.
“This is a big deal,” Commissioner Kane said. “This is huge to the families. And I want everyone to be safe.
“I know they feel out in Piper that this was some sort of threat, and nobody likes that,” he said.
He said he’s never had so many phone calls and emails saying they can’t do this.
“As long as they follow those guidelines, they should play ball,” Commissioner Kane said.
Ken Moore, UG attorney, was asked for his opinion about the health orders.
Moore said the Legislature in the special session changed the statutes allowing the county commissions to override the local health orders.
He still believes the local health orders are more broad than the school board’s powers, he said.
The state’s attorney general has previously said that he thinks school boards can make the decisions about their own school district and what happens in their buildings. He also has said county commissions can overrule county health orders.
Commissioner Tom Burroughs asked about rumors that there would be a quarantine period or a 25-day trial period.
With some professional sports, there is a ton of resources being poured into the trials, with lots of testing and cohorting, Dr. Greiner said. While they’re open to creative solutions, it’s also a resource issue, of what they can do, he said.
“The real question is, are we treating our kids in a punitive manner, or is the message all wrong,” Commissioner Burroughs asked. At some point, they have to recognize the mental health aspect, he added.
They need some assistance as a community to find a result that’s not punitive, but is understandable and offers a safeguard without being heavy-handed, Commissioner Burroughs said.
Dr. Corriveau said it was a difficult time for them to think about what to do next. There were a lot of loud voices now on this issue, and also some quiet voices who are afraid, she said. They are hearing from both.
It is a fine line, and they don’t want to take hope away from the youth, Dr. Corriveau said. They have prioritized classroom learning and allow them to receive their education, she said. They have prioritized classroom learning over extracurricular activities at this point, although they realize extracurricular activities are important.
There is evidence, including the local team that had an outbreak, that close contact spreads the virus, and no evidence that it doesn’t, Mayor David Alvey said.
The measures they’re trying to put in place are always about trying to protect people, Mayor Alvey said.
All the measures are incremental, and no one thing does it all, he said.
Mayor Alvey has heard people say they are dictating, and he said that football is all about dictating and limits. “We dictate you cannot rough the passer,” he said. It’s dictating, and “that’s simply done for safety.”
In his previous role as a school administrator, Mayor Alvey said he was formerly in charge of making sure that conditions at games were safe. When a lightning detector showed that it was dangerous, they had to evacuate and cancel that game, he said.
“That was not a punishment, it is a consequence,” Mayor Alvey said. “There are natural consequences of actions and there are punishments.”
Telling people not to engage in close contact is not punitive, but simply a safety measure that is a consequence, he said.
The enemy is not the Health Department, nor the administration, it is the virus, he said.
The virus is going to do what the virus wants to do, he said. What they must do is pay attention, and decide what it is that they need to do to stop it. Every time they take their eye off it, they lose track of what they’re about, because the virus is dictating to them. Then the virus will take them where they don’t want to go, he said.
As a school administrator, he said he understands how important athletics are.
“But I would never have allowed the game to go on with lightning coming down,” he said. He was not going to be the person who did not evacuate the stands and people died, he added.
“If we do what we need to do to slow the virus, we take control and not let the virus control us,” Mayor Alvey said.
Health Department offers details about COVID-19 numbers
Much of the Health Department presentation went into detail about the fall sports order, explaining the reasoning behind it. Some contact sports were prohibited in the order.
Dr. Greiner said the Wyandotte County case rates per 100,000 were double that of Kansas City, Missouri’s rate, twice as much as the state rate and three times the Johnson County rate.
Only Kansas City, Missouri, is doing more testing than Wyandotte County, he said. “Our rate is significantly higher,” he said.
Wyandotte County has 5% of the total Kansas population, but 14% of Kansas COVID-19 cases and 26% of Kansas COVID-19 deaths, he said.
The seven-day rolling average is 45 cases a day, which is an improvement, he said Deaths are less than a half per day, but the percent positivity rate is high at 18 percent. The Health Department testing percent positivity rate is 27 percent.
Dr. Greiner said most of the decline in new cases they’ve seen since the middle of July has been due to the mask order.
While COVID-19 is still most deadly for older adults, about a fifth of the deaths are among those younger than 60, he said. In the last month, there have been slightly higher numbers of deaths, but that may decline as the effects of the mask order are seen, according to Dr. Greiner. The number of deaths in lower age groups has been increasing.
Juliann van Liew, Health Department director, said the Centers for Disease Control within the last few days has issued new guidelines against testing close contacts of positive cases. She said the Health Department believes this is largely politically motivated and the Health Department will not be adopting it.
The Health Department, however, will be recommending tests from 7 to 9 days after exposure to a positive case, a little longer than the previous 5 to 7 days, she said.
Van Liew said the Health Department is working on saliva testing validation, is near completion and they expect to finish in the next week or so. They will be moving away from the nasal swab test if it works out. Tests are free at the Health Department for those who live or work in Wyandotte County, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Wyandotte County is running the second highest in tests in the metropolitan area; however there has been a decrease in testing numbers in the past few weeks, she said. They are now testing about 65 people a day, she said. The 7-day rolling average of tests is a little under 400, she added.
A rolling average of positive test percentages has been going up, which is one of the things that worries them about school reopening and activities, she said.
Dr. Erin Corriveau, deputy chief medical officer, said COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital have been increasing recently.
The University of Kansas Health Center on Thursday morning reported 27 COVID-19 patients in the hospital, with an additional 34 COVID-19 patients still there who are not considered acutely infectious. Usually, about a third to a half of the patients at the hospital are from Wyandotte County, Dr. Corriveau said.
The number of people admitted to the hospital locally without any other existing conditions also has been increasing, she said.
Dr. Corriveau said youth from 0 to 19 years old make up about 14.7 percent of all OVID-19 cases in Wyandotte County. People ages 60 and older make up about 14.4 percent of the Wyandotte County cases, she said.
There is a disproportionate effect on Hispanic youth, she said. Over 50 percent of youth COVID-19 patients were Hispanics.
“We’re starting to find there are long-term cardiovascular effects,” she said.
Dr. Greiner cited a study in Germany earlier this month with a group of 100 persons ages 40 to 60 who were four months out from a COVID-19 infection.
They did cardiac MRIs on the hearts and found 78 of 100 patients had persistent cardiac muscle motion deficit, he said.
“We know this virus does attack the heart in certain patients significantly,” Dr. Greiner said.
“We are constantly trying to walk a fine line between being extremely cautious and use the science and data we know we have to protect everyone, and to allow freedoms,” Dr. Greiner said. They hope to get students back in the classrooms safely, he said.
With social distancing and mask mandates, they hope to control the virus more than they did with the stay-at-home order, he added.
But it’s really tough walking that fine line, and trying to work with everyone, who have their own individual concerns that are important, he said.
“We just don’t want to see a situation where we let activities like in-class schooling start again and might have a heart issue in some patients down the line that we feel could have been avoided with more careful planning and more detailed analysis of who’s in contact with them,” Dr. Greiner said.
Dr. Corriveau said after Labor Day, many students will be returning for 50% in-class learning. The Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools will do remote learning for the first nine weeks.
The Health Department has worked with the school districts to devise plans that use cohorting, where students are in small groups that stay together, and don’t mix with other students.
If one person gets sick, they would not compromise the other students outside their cohort, she said.
“We have become concerned, after issuing our previous order regarding sports, that many of the activities planned for students have moved outside the county,” she said. “We worry that when we allow our students to go elsewhere to compete and then return back to Wyandotte County, unfortunately we’ve broken those cohorts and we may be placing our children at risk,” she said.
It’s not just about the children, as their parents, grandparents and guardians also may be at risk, she added.
If there are two separate cohorts in one building experiencing clusters at the same time, that would be an appropriate time to close the school for fear the virus would spread, she said.
If absenteeism for in-person classes is 10% higher than last year’s average, they would consider closing the school at that time, she said. This is still under discussion, she said.
So far, there have been 10 clusters associated with sports in Kansas, according to Dr. Corriveau. She cited KDHE statistics. One of the clusters was a Kansas City, Kansas, volleyball club team, she said. Some of the sports were contact sports, but not all of them were, she added.
She said when students are allowed to practice or pay sports or other activities, it may not be with their cohorts, kids from other cohorts would get together and unfortunately, it would be compromising the cohort at that time, she said.
Additionally, busing children outside the county to participate in other activities or “away” games is a concern to the Health Department, she said.
If the kids were to become infected in that setting, they worry that they would bring the virus back and it would spread quickly through the cohort that they had laid out so carefully through the school, she said.
In many ways, Wyandotte County has been successful with its efforts to reduce the spread of COVID-19, Dr. Greiner said.
They are hoping that if people go outside the county to do activities, they would prioritize wearing masks and social distancing, he said.
“Our concern is whenever we identify something that’s happening that might involve no masks and no social distancing, how can we mitigate the spread,” he asked.
They’re aware that people may be doing all sorts of things, he said, but they hope people are trying to be careful and reduce the spread.
To view the 5 p.m. UG meeting, visit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il5QBoKunhM
For more information on who may be tested and what to bring, visit https://wyandotte-county-covid-19-hub-unifiedgov.hub.arcgis.com/pages/what-to-do-if-you-think-you-have-covid-19.
The Unified Government Health Department is now collecting input on people’s experiences getting tested for COVID-19 in Wyandotte County. The survey is on the UG website at https://us.openforms.com/Form/ea97a450-3d74-4d86-8d1f-6e340d55cf7c.
The UG Health Department sports order is online at https://alpha.wycokck.org/files/assets/public/health/documents/covid/08132020localhealthofficerorderregardingsports.pdf.
The Wyandotte County school start order is online at https://alpha.wycokck.org/Coronavirus-COVID-19-Information.
Wyandotte County is under a mandatory mask order and is in Phase 3 of the state’s reopening plan. For more information, residents may visit the UG COVID-19 website at https://alpha.wycokck.org/Coronavirus-COVID-19-Information or call 311 for more information.
The CDC’s COVID-19 web page is at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html.