Coronavirus news: Fourth Wyandotte County death reported; doctors fear for own safety
As Wyandotte County reported its fourth death relating to COVID-19 on Sunday, doctors and nurses across the Kansas City area are being forced to reuse personal protection equipment they used to throw away.
Doctors and nurses are sterilizing disposable face masks and bleaching gowns in an attempt to reuse as many as they can to stretch gear that protects them from the virus as they care for patients.
While some hospitals say they have enough personal protective equipment, or PPE, for now, about half of Missouri’s hospitals report they have shortages and many in Kansas are scrambling to find supplies.
Nurses have shared their concerns with each other on the 13,000-member Nurses KC private Facebook group, said the moderator, Holly Gunter.
“They’re all out there taking care of patients and they don’t feel protected,” Gunter said. “They’re scared.”
And despite billions of tax dollars heading to hospitals and states as part of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus response bill, the critical shortage of protective gear won’t fix the problem.
The problem isn’t the lack of money. It is a lack of supplies.
These fears come as doctors and nurses brace for a surge of patients from the coronavirus pandemic.
At least 319 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in Kansas and six have died as of Saturday, according to the latest statistics as from state health officials.
In Missouri, more than 830 people have tested positive for the disease and 10 have died as of Saturday, according to the latest statistics from state health officials.
Wyandotte County reports fourth death
“We are very sad to confirm a 4th COVID-19 death in Wyandotte, a man in his 90s,” the Unified Government Public Health Department announced on Facebook.
He was originally diagnosed with COVID-19 on March 21 and died a week later, on Saturday, according to Janell Friesen, communications coordinator for the Unified Government Public Health department.
He was the third person to die from the disease last week. A man in his 80s with multiple underlying health conditions died Thursday and man in his 70s died at the hospital Monday from the disease.
Wyandotte County has 55 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 23 patients hospitalized. The county also has 102 self-reporting responses, of which 38 are probable cases, according to the statistics.
Meanwhile, Johnson County reported it’s second COVID-19 death — a woman in her 90s who had underlying health conditions from the disease.
The number of people testing positive for the virus in Johnson County rose to 101 cases. Johnson County has reported a total of two deaths from COVID-19.
In Kansas, at least 319 people have tested positive for the coronavirus and six have died as of Saturday, according to the latest statistics as from state health officials.
Lack of Medicaid expansion could hurt fight
Failure by both Missouri and Kansas to expand Medicaid will make coping with the novel coronavirus even more costly than anticipated, advocates of Medicare expansion contend.
It could also put the public at greater risk as those without health coverage remain untreated and accelerate the spread of the virus.
Gov. Laura Kelly, whose bipartisan expansion proposal has stalled, has lamented Kansas’ failure to enact expansion before the pandemic.
“First of all, we would have been drawing down about a billion dollars more from the feds just through Medicaid expansion. So clearly that would have helped shore up our health system,” Kelly said.
Kansas and Missouri are two of 14 states that have not expanded the program.
Opponents of Medicaid expansion reject the notion that expansion would have better equipped the states to deal with this crisis.
“States with Medicaid expansion are suffering just as much as states without,” said Kansas House Majority Leader Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican. “It’s unfortunate that some people are trying to politicize this disaster to push their agenda.”
Nationally, there have been at least 125,313 confirmed COVID-19 cases with at least 2,197 deaths, according to the latest statistics.
This story was originally published March 29, 2020 at 1:10 PM.
