COVID-19 news: Extended stay-at-home orders meet resistance as more deaths reported
Wyandotte County, the area hit hardest by the new coronavirus in Kansas, reported four more COVID-19 related deaths Friday.
Thirty-five people have died since health officials in the county reported the first case on March 12.
Two clusters of outbreaks in the county have accounted for dozens of cases.
At Riverbend Post Acute Rehabilitation, 116 COVID-19 cases have been reported. Nineteen people have died.
Forty-four cases and five deaths have been linked to a March church gathering at Miracle Temple Church of God in Christ in Kansas City, Kansas.
Across Kansas, 1,588 cases have been confirmed while Missouri has 5,111.
Stay-at-home orders
Wyandotte County announced it would remain under Kansas’ statewide COVID-19 stay-at-home order, which Gov. Laura Kelly extended from April 19 to May 3, rather than following the lead of Kansas City, which extended its order to May 15.
In Missouri, Jackson County and the cities of Lee’s Summit, North Kansas City and Independence extended their stay-at-home orders until May 15.
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson stretched his order banning gatherings of 10 or more people for another week, until May 3. After that, Parson said, he plans to begin re-opening the state so “people can go back to work.” But areas that have been hardest hit by COVID-19, such as Kansas City and St. Louis, may take longer to fully re-open, Parson said.
The Kansas City metro area has more than 1,440 cases.
Opposition
The decision to prolong the orders has been met with some resistance, with a group of protesters planning demonstrations next week.
But doctors warned that they risk infecting one another and their communities.
“It’s a really bad idea,” said Steven Stites, chief medical officer with the University of Kansas Health System. “If you take a virus that’s highly contagious and respirable and you want to open up society, is there a worse way to make your point than to make everybody sick?
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, also discouraged the protests, planned for Kansas City, Topeka and Jefferson City.
A flyer advertising a demonstration set for noon Monday in Kansas City urges protesters to “flood the streets of downtown Kansas City and demand that businesses be allowed to open up, people allowed to work, and lives returned to normal.”
Prison cases
Inmates at the Wichita Work Release Facility are in quarantine after a positive case was found earlier this week.
That patient, along with 113 inmates who lived on the same floor as him, were transferred to the prison at Lansing, which has had the state prison system’s biggest outbreak of the coronavirus. The Lansing Correctional Facility reported at least 36 staff members and 29 inmates have tested positive as of Thursday. At Lansing the inmates were moved to a specific quarantine area within the prison.
Four inmates from the Wichita facility and multiple family members told The Star that Kansas prison officials have failed to act quickly enough to stop the contagion.
The Missouri Department of Corrections reported five prison staff members have COVID-19. Seven other department employees also have tested positive.
A Missouri inmate who had underlying health conditions died last month from the coronavirus.
More than 670,000 people in the U.S. have contracted the virus and nearly 29,000 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. More than 54,000 people have recovered.
