Tag: COVID-19

First group of KC COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund grant recipients includes some Wyandotte County organizations

Several Wyandotte County organizations are on the list of grant recipients that will receive aid from the Kansas City Regional COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund.

The fund is distributing more than $2.6 million in aid to 56 area nonprofits for housing support, food assistance, access to health care and other critical human services, according to an announcement.

“At a time when our region is facing an unprecedented demand on human services, I’m proud this partnership has seen everyone in the community coming together to take action and make a real difference,” said United Way of Greater Kansas City president and CEO Brent Stewart. “The programs and organizations benefitting from this first round of grants are those on the front lines of providing the most urgent of basic needs. They are invaluable, and we thank them for their efforts. And, we thank each and every individual and organization whose contributions made this possible.”

“Thanks to our community’s generosity, the fund was able to quickly collect and deploy resources to address critical needs in vulnerable populations,” said Debbie Wilkerson, President and CEO, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. “But this is only the beginning. There are more rounds of grants to come.”

Additional grants will be released on a rolling basis as fundraising continues and needs are identified throughout all phases of the crisis.

Initial grant recipients:

  • Avenue of Life
  • Bishop Sullivan Center
  • Catholic Charities of Kansas City-St. Joseph
  • Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas
  • Center of Grace
  • City Union Mission
  • Community Action Agency of Greater Kansas City
  • Community LINC
  • Community Services League
  • Connecting For Good
  • Cross-Lines Community Outreach
  • Della Lamb Community Services
  • Don Bosco Centers
  • East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corp.
  • El Centro
  • Fairmount Community Center
  • Feed Northland Kids
  • Food Equality Initiative
  • Friends of Yates
  • Giving the Basics
  • Grandview Assistance Program
  • Guadalupe Centers
  • Harvesters
  • Health Partnership Clinic, Inc.
  • Heart of America Indian Center
  • Heart to Heart International
  • Hillcrest Ministries of MidAmerica, Inc.
  • Hope Faith
  • Johnson County Mental Health Center
  • Kansas City’s Medicine Cabinet
  • KC CARE Health Center
  • Kearney Enrichment Council
  • Kim Wilson Housing
  • Leavenworth Interfaith Community of Hope
  • Lee’s Summit Social Services
  • Love INC of Clay County
  • Metro Lutheran Ministry
  • Newhouse
  • Northland Shepherd’s Center
  • PACES, Inc.
  • Platte Senior Services, Inc.
  • reStart, Inc.
  • Rose Brooks Center
  • Safehome
  • Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center
  • SAVE, Inc.
  • Sharon Lee Family Health Care
  • Shepherd’s Center KC Central
  • Shepherd’s Center of Raytown
  • Swope Health Services
  • Synergy Services, Inc.
  • United Inner City Services
  • Veterans Community Project
  • Vibrant Health
  • Working Families’ Friend
  • Wyandot Center

The Advisory Board of the Kansas City Regional COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund

The 20-member Advisory Board is made up of foundation, civic and community representatives who oversee the Fund. These individuals have both an understanding of the community’s needs and the charitable organizations that work to serve those needs, and they work together to assess potential grant recipients. The members of the board include:

• Mayra Aguirre, Hall Family Foundation
• Julie Brewer, United Community Services of Johnson County
• Rita Cortes, Menorah Heritage Foundation
• Micah Rose Emerson, Community Representative
• Carla Gibson, REACH Healthcare Foundation
• Geoff Jolley, LISC Greater Kansas City
• Jan Kauk, North Kansas City School Board of Education
• Randy Lopez, Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools Board Member
• Jim MacDonald, United Way of Greater Kansas City
• McClain Bryant Macklin, Civic Council of Greater Kansas City
• Maureen Mahoney, Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas
• Denise St. Omer, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation
• Rachel Russell, Community Representative
• Debbie Sosland-Edelman, The Sosland Foundation
• Carrie Stewart, William T. Kemper Foundation, Commerce Bank Trustee
• Qiana Thomason, Health Forward Foundation
• Randy Vance, Sunderland Foundation
• David Warm, moderator, Mid-America Regional Council
• Michele Watley, Shirley’s Kitchen Cabinet
• Carey Wilkerson, The H & R Block Foundation and the Marion and Henry Bloch Charitable Foundation

Donor update
Since the launch of the Fund in March, dozens of new organizations have made significant donations to the fund.

These funders include:

 Academy Bank
 Ann and Gary Dickinson Family Charitable Foundation
 Bank of America
 Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City
 Burns & McDonnell Foundation
 Cerner Foundation, First Hand
 Cloud L. Cray Foundation
 CommunityAmerica Foundation
 Compass Minerals
 Coventry Family Foundation
 Dave and Dee Dillon Charitable Fund
 Deloitte
 Delta Dental of Missouri
 Evergy
 Francis Family Foundation
 Gautreaux Family Fund
 GEHA
 General Motors
 Gray Family Foundation
 Hulston Family Foundation
 Humana
 JDC Family Foundation
 Jedel Family Foundation
 JMW & Associates, LLC
 John W. & Effie E. Speas Memorial Trust, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee
 Kansas Gas Service, a Division of ONE Gas
 Kao Family Foundation
 Kiewit
 Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Wachstein & their son Julius & Thau Family Trust Fund
 Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation
 Parris Communications
 PNC Foundation
 Price Brothers Charitable Foundation
 PWC Charitable Foundation
 Steve and Carole Price Charitable Foundation
 Stuart A. Schlemmer Charitable Fund
 Tension Envelope Corporation
 The Abe & Anna Bograd Memorial Trust
 The DeBruce Foundation and Paul and Linda DeBruce
 The Granary Fund in memory of Pat and Cliff Jones
 The Ronald D. Deffenbaugh Foundation
 Tim and Elin Murphy Family Foundation
 TruckMovers
 U.S. Bank
 VanTrust Real Estate
 William G. McGowan Charitable Fund

KCC extends order suspending utility disconnects until May 15

The Kansas Corporation Commission has extended the emergency order suspending utility disconnects until May 15, according to a news release today.

The action was taken at a meeting this morning because of the continuing threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the KCC.

The action is expected to offer relief to persons experiencing hardship from the COVID-19 virus. The previous order, issued March 16, was set to expire April 15.

The directive covers all electrical, natural gas, water and telecommunications utilities under the KCC’s jurisdiction.

“The difficulties associated with COVID-19 are far from over. As Kansans continue to face both health and financial challenges, it is critical that they have continued access to utility services in their homes to ensure public safety,” Commission Chair Susan Duffy said in a news release.

This includes some gas companies and telephone companies that serve Wyandotte County.

The Board of Public Utilities is not under the KCC. The BPU announced on March 13 it was temporarily suspending utility cutoffs. There was no end time announced to the suspension in March. The BPU encouraged people who could not pay their bills to call 913-573-9145 to set up payment arrangements.

COVID-19 discussion centers around a new ‘normal’

The Unified Government COVID-19 webpage reported 343 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 29 deaths in Wyandotte County at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday. (UG COVID-19 webpage)
A graph showed the number of COVID-19 cases in Wyandotte County on Tuesday. (UG COVID-19 webpage)

Wyandotte County reports 343 positive cases, 29 total deaths

The national discussion around COVID-19 is starting to change to a gradual return to a more normal, or a different normal way of living, and doctors at the University of Kansas Health System today offered their opinions about how people may be dealing with the coronavirus in the future.

In Wyandotte County, 343 total positive COVID-19 cases were reported on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m., with 29 deaths, according to the Unified Government’s COVID-19 website. Of 400 persons who sent in information to the UG’s self-reporting website, about 178 of those were considered to be probable cases, the website stated. The state of Kansas reported 1,426 positive cases on Tuesday morning, with 69 deaths.

The UG’s COVID-19 website showed that new case numbers were not rising as fast as they had last week.

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection control and prevention for the KU Health System, said that while projections are getting better, they didn’t want to be too optimistic, because the projections could change.

Trials for vaccines are going on, and if a vaccine is found, it could take 18 months to get to the public, Dr. Hawkinson said.

KU Hospital currently has 29 inpatients, with 12 in the intensive care unit and nine on a ventilator, about the same as yesterday’s report, he said. Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at KU Health System, noted it has decreased slightly, as there were 14 on ventilators and up to 34 patients at one time previously.

Dr. Hawkinson said the KU Health System is actively preparing for a trial for donors who want to give plasma and convalescent serum. Dr. Stites said that this program probably would pool together plasma from more than one donor, then give it to people who are sick with COVID-19 and not recovering well. At this time, it would not be available to those who were not sick or to those who were mildly sick. Results would be reported to a national database and available for study later.

Most people who have had COVID-19 would mount an antibody response in 11 to 14 days, according to Dr. Hawkinson. Donors who have recovered from COVID-19 would have to wait some time before donating, as some of them have been getting an early and a later bout of illness, according to Dr. Stites. Donations would not be made through KU Health Systems; possibly they would be through the blood centers.

The idea of herd immunity currently is being discussed. As a disease spreads through a big population, enough people may get it until the disease doesn’t pass effectively – it runs into people who have already had it and are immune, and it isn’t passed on.

Dr. Stephen Lauer, a pediatrician and associate chair of pediatrics at KU Health System, said that kids as a group don’t seem to be getting as sick with COVID-19 as older patients. It may not be possible to tell that they have it, as there are some persons who don’t have symptoms, he said.

“The problem with building herd immunity right now is we don’t have any idea of how big the herd is,” Dr. Lauer said. “We don’t know how many have been infected, how many have recovered, and so it’s really not possible to get a reliable sense of herd immunity.”

The best way to get to immunity now is through immunizations that may be developed, he said, to avoid severe illnesses and deaths.

Dr. Stites said for people who have diseases of the immune system, heart failure, transplants or chronic lung disease, opening up society again is a real fear as they may come into contact with people who have the disease.

Herd immunity generally requires about 80 to 90 percent of the population to have had the disease and recovered, according to Dr. Hawkinson, or for vaccinations of that amount of the population.

“We think only about 1 or 2 percent of Kansas Citians in our area actually have had Sars-Cov2 (the novel coronavirus),” Dr. Stites said. “That’s a pretty low proportion. We are seeing the flattening of the curve.”

Everyone in this area has demonstrated to the nation how to flatten the curve, he said. Although they’re not sure if they’ve seen the peak of the curve, they have flattened it, he said.

“Folks have sheltered in place, stayed at home, maintained their distance, which we wanted you to do,” he said. If they hadn’t, the health care systems would have been overwhelmed, with more problems, he added.

While Wyandotte County and Kansas are still under a “stay-at-home” order for COVID-19, a national discussion is ongoing about reopening society. The governor has said she planned to extend the “stay-at-home” order next week.

If there are not enough people who have been infected or vaccinated, then it becomes easy to pass the virus, Dr. Stites said, when society opens back up.

While it is a scary thought for people at home with other conditions, it’s still possible for individuals to remain sheltered, he said. According to Dr. Stites, just because other parts of society have opened doesn’t mean that individuals can’t still practice good handwashing, keep a distance from others, not touch their face, avoid large crowds and wear a mask until the time there is better therapy, can predict the risk factors, and vaccinations are available.

“There are things you can do to stay safe even as society starts to open back up,” Dr. Stites said. “When we start to reopen society, we have to do it in a cautious, logical and thoughtful format.”

Dr. Lauer added it was important for people with chronic conditions to work with their doctors to keep it under control.

Dr. Lauer said that while they are currently fighting one infectious disease, COVID-19, it also was important to keep up the herd immunity on all the other childhood diseases. It is important to give vaccines to infants and toddlers against other diseases, he said, as he wouldn’t want to see the return of preventable diseases such as mumps and measles.

As society starts to reopen, Dr. Stites said it may not look the same right away. Residents need to keep up the social distancing, washing their hands, not going out in large gatherings for a while, until they have effective immunizations, he said.

“COVID-19 is going to be with us a while,” he said, “it’s not going to go away, and that’s a challenge to all of us.”

“If we work to stay safe, even as we reopen this world, we can beat COVID,” Dr. Stites said.

To see a video of the KU doctors’ news conference, visit https://www.facebook.com/kuhospital/videos/1488164271356665/

The UG’s COVID-19 webpage is at https://alpha.wycokck.org/Coronavirus-COVID-19-Information

The Kansas COVID-19 resource page is at https://govstatus.egov.com/coronavirus.

The CDC COVID-19 page is at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html.