Dining out? Going back to work? As Kansas City area reopens, here’s how to stay safe
Your hands are chapped from all the washing. You’ve spent weeks trying not to touch your face. You’ve been staying far, far away from anyone coughing because you’re trying to survive a pandemic.
And now it’s time to go back to work, time to go back out as much of the Kansas City area begins to reemerge this week from COVID-19 shutdowns. Now you have to make different decisions about how to protect yourself from a highly contagious coronavirus that continues to infect the area, and the nation.
So, uh, what was that you just touched at Starbucks?
“It’s not the droplets in the air that I would be worried about,” said Dr. Darrin D’Agostino, executive dean of Kansas City University. “It’s the droplets that have hit the surfaces where I might be sitting, or touching.
“So when I go into Starbucks and I put my hands on the counter waiting for my coffee, that would be the place I would be worried about out in public because I’m not going to walk near someone who is sneezing and coughing.”
Health experts like D’Agostino offer a wealth of advice for people venturing out after weeks of staying at home. They remain cautious:
▪ At a restaurant, ask to be seated outside.
▪ Keep your friends at more than arm’s length and preserve that “bubble” of family members you’ve been hunkering down with.
▪Consider changing out of your clothes outside or in the garage when you get home.
And there’s this: Leaving your home only when necessary is the best way to avoid exposure and spreading the virus.
On Friday, there were 96 new cases of COVID-19 reported in the five-county area, and three more deaths, bringing the total +number of cases to 2,832.
Mark Logan doesn’t plan to change his routine. He has not lacked for company these past few weeks as he and his family followed the region’s stay-at-home orders. “We have six people sheltering in our house right now,” says the Leawood business consultant. “Six of us, a dog and a cat.”
There are strict rules for the humans — Logan, his partner, Jennifer Diggs, and four of their young adult children.
No one else is allowed inside the house. After going out, everyone must wash their hands. Logan spritzes his cellphone and keys with Lysol after trips to the grocery store and pharmacy, and there haven’t been many.
And now that businesses are reopening and people are going back to work?
It’s status quo for the Logan-Diggs household.
“The virus is still here,” said Logan, who worked from home pre-COVID. “People are still vulnerable to it.
“Our plan is still, and this echoes the advice I’m hearing from public health professionals, stay at home, wash your hands, wear a mask, stay 6 feet away from people, don’t go out unless it’s absolutely necessary. All of that stuff still applies. So to the extent possible, we’re not going to do anything differently.”
Logan said he’s not taking safety measures out of fear. But his fellow Americans admit they are unsettled about re-entry: 68% worry their state governments are lifting COVID-19 restrictions too quickly, a new poll by Pew Research Center revealed.
And Logan is right. Medical experts do not want people to abandon safety precautions they’ve encouraged since the pandemic began. They could not be more insistent if they shouted from a mountaintop.
“I think especially as we start emerging back into life again, it’s easy to forget those habits we’ve been working on so hard the last eight weeks or so, to fall back into our normal routines where we’re not consciously making those efforts,” said Susanna Paschal, a registered nurse and corporate director of infection prevention for Truman Medical Centers.
“And we’re likely to see an increase in cases because people will just return to their pre-COVID existence.”
Without a vaccine and adequate testing, the best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is simply to avoid exposure to it, health officials continue to counsel, even as they fear that people are tuning them out.
As businesses reopen, they say you can limit that exposure by leaving home only when absolutely necessary — grabbing groceries and medicine, getting medical help, spending time outdoors and now, for many more people, going to work.
Steve Stites, the chief medical officer for The University of Kansas Health System, has spent weeks fielding COVID-19 questions from the media and public. His answer to many questions about staying safe from the virus has often boiled down to how much risk you’re willing to take based on your personal priorities and your health, especially if you are at greatest risk of dying from the disease.
Said D’Agostino: “Until we know the truly susceptible population and the amount of immunity out there, the force of infection, we have to assume that anybody can get this.”
Health experts have been trying to get Americans to understand that life the way it was two months ago is gone. Goodbye, handshakes.
For now, staying safe “is our new normal until we can find a way to control the virus,” said Dr. Allison Edwards at Kansas City Direct Primary Care in Kansas City, Kansas. “And so what I try to counsel my patients to expect is that it’s OK to want things to go back to normal. That’s a very human thing.
“But it’s also somewhat unrealistic to think that we’re going to go back to normal because we still have to protect ourselves, those around us, certainly essential workers, and in order to do that we still have to change our habits from what they were back at the beginning of March.”
Keep working from home
Lots of people have asked D’Agostino about how to be safe at work. Do I need to wear a mask when I’m in the office? Should I wear gloves getting in and out of the building?
“And the answer to that is we’re in phase one right now in most places,” D’Agostino said. “And if you read them, phase one is, ‘If you can work from home, you ought to talk with your employer about working from home.’”
Kansas’ reopening plan “strongly” encourages telework for all employees when possible. Missouri’s “Show Me Strong” recovery plan advises businesses to “encourage telework whenever possible and feasible with business operations.”
Still 6 feet
This pandemic rule still holds true: Avoid close contact with other people, especially sick people and especially if you are at higher risk of getting very sick from the coronavirus, public health officials say.
Paschal is “very mindful of where she is standing” when she is out in public. “I naturally don’t want people inside my bubble.”
Now, that includes making sure your restaurant table is 6 feet away from the next one over.
“Whether you are going back to work or picking up lunch from a nearby restaurant, make sure you are 6 feet or more from others, especially when around other people for more than 10 minutes,” says a new list of safety tips from county health departments in the metro.
“If you can still practice social distancing, that’s still incredibly important,” said Edwards. “And the nuisance behind that, of course, I realize that not everybody has the opportunity to do that, or the economic freedom to do that. So it’s a tough thing to do.
“But it’s still important because the virus doesn’t listen to whether or not a stay-at-home order has ended or not. It’s still out here.”
Assess your surroundings
How can you tell it’s safe to be out? Say, in a restaurant?
“It’s an easy question to answer if you want to be 100% safe,” said D’Agostino. “One hundred percent safe is you don’t go (into) restaurants. You continue to cook at home. … You pick up takeout.”
Practice “situational awareness,” Paschal said.
“You kind of want to survey and see, are they really following the rules that have been set by the mayor or whomever the government powers may be,” she said.
“Are they wearing masks? Are they requiring masks? Are they social distancing people 6 feet away? Does it look like they’re properly cleaning? The CDC has put cleaning product recommendations online, and ultimately they should be cleaning with an EPA-approved disinfectant cleaner.”
In a restaurant, “are they performing hand hygiene? They should be washing their hands just as frequently as anyone else, even more frequently because they’re having that contact between your table and another table. And are they washing their hands between those contacts?”
Do your homework
That’s where homework comes in. Ask questions before you go into a business, Paschal advised. In Johnson County, where businesses start reopening Monday, health officials say the same. “Educate yourself on specific guidelines businesses are putting into place to help keep staff and customers safe, so you know what to expect,” they say.
D’Agostino said restaurants “should actually have a scripted answer” to any of your safety questions “because if I were a restaurant I would want people to know what I’m doing in order to be safe.”
He said he has counseled businesses to be “overcautious, not because the virus is any worse or better, but simply because you want people to feel comfortable. So it would make more sense that they actually have a written description of what’s going on.”
Dine outdoors
In hospitals, people with the contagious COVID-19 are isolated from other patients in rooms that safely control air flow. You can’t inspect the heating and cooling system of your favorite restaurant, said Edwards. But, you can choose outdoor seating if they offer it, she said.
“Air flow matters, which is why generally, open spaces, outdoor spaces, where you can still stay separated, are going to be the most ideal places to interact with others,” Edwards said.
Change your clothes
If you think you’ve been exposed to the virus while out in public — or your job requires being around the public like restaurant wait staff — consider changing your clothes as soon as you get home.
The droplets that contain the virus “don’t escape gravity,” said D’Agostino. “They go to ground. They go on clothes, they go on surfaces. So the best thing that you can do, after you’re jaunting outside, is when you come home, before you hug your wife or your husband or your kids … you should get changed. Wash your hands. …
“It’s not any different than what I would do after coming out of the ICU and taking care of patients all weekend. Before I would hug my kids or my wife, I would change.”
Maintain your ‘bubble’
Logan found ways for his children to have friends over safely. His daughter invited a friend to watch Netflix in the driveway, and they sat 8 feet apart. “Strictly by the book, even that’s not really sanctioned,” he said. “But we also have to worry about mental health, so we’re trying to make reasonable allowances.”
The friend never entered the house. And some health experts encourage for now keeping intact that “bubble” of people you’ve been spending the last two months with — the people you live with. “I think the key word is slowly adding people in,” said Paschal. “You don’t want to all of a sudden have a party for 50 people.”
Continue to be cautious “about being around anybody,” said Edwards.
“I think we always want easy answers and quick solutions. And honestly, we are all just tired of distancing. But so long as the virus is out there and spreading in the community, there’s not really a shortcut to that.”
D’Agostino said those rules apply when you start socializing again. In a restaurant, for instance, “any table that you’re sitting at should only be with your family or the people that you live with,” he said.
If not, if you’re going to be seated with a larger group, “then at those tables they should be able to accommodate enough of a distance between you that any cough or sneeze is not going to affect you,” he said.
“Now, that’s difficult because you can’t put somebody 6 feet away from you at a table. So how are you going to share these things? Well, you don’t share utensils. If somebody is sick, they are sniffling. … Whether they believe it’s allergies or not, they should not be at the table with you.
“And people are going to have to be strong enough to say, ‘I’m sorry, we really would like you to be here but right now it’s not a wise idea.’”
Most jurisdictions limit gatherings to no more than 10.
“The weather is getting warmer and students are eager to celebrate graduations,” Jamie Miller, director of Leavenworth County EMS and Health Department, said in a recent statement.
“We would advise residents to limit the number of people gathering in one location and keep a safe distance between yourself and others, especially if you are immune-compromised or over the age of 60.”
Don’t touch that
Most people have heard by now that after touching germ-infested surfaces like gas pumps and ATM machine buttons you should wash your hands with soap and water — remember the 20-second rule — or use hand sanitizer.
The pandemic rules of hand washing still apply.
“Try and limit what you are touching when you are in public,” said Edwards. “Just be more cautious. And as much as you can, make sure your hands are clean in between touching surfaces. We’ve heard this from the very beginning and it is still absolutely true.”
Stay informed
Information about COVID-19 cases where you live, testing sites and safety recommendations is posted on state, county and in some cases city health department websites. Some local physicians, including Edwards, have posted information on their websites, too.
“I’m completely biased, but I think if you have a good relationship with a primary care doctor, your doctor can ultimately be the best source of information for you because they can distill what’s going on in the greater context and also apply it toward your personal situation,” Edwards said.
There are private efforts underway, too, to educate the public about safely reopening the metro. Businesses and civic groups created Safe Return KC, touted as a “road map informed by federal, state and local sources” to help companies and their employees get back to work.
A collaborative of Kansas City business leaders called C19KC, which has supplied test kits and personal protective equipment to local organizations, helped launch a public campaign last week called Comeback KC.
With information from health departments, the drive is designed to be a regional source of COVID-19 information, emphasizing safety as the local economy comes back. Mark Logan is helping with the campaign.
“This is a time when we need collective action,” he said. “We need unity. We really need everyone to come together. It’s a tragedy that this issue has become part of the partisan polarization in this country. We should all be able to come together around stopping 3,000 people dying a day. That’s super easy.
“And coming together means making tiny, tiny, tiny personal sacrifices.”
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