Opening bars, restaurants uncertain after COVID-19 outbreak at Kansas City senior home
Update: Mayor Quinton Lucas announced Friday that restaurants, bars and other large facilities may reopen May 15, with restrictions. Details here.
Seven residents and four staff members at a senior living facility in the Northland have COVID-19, an outbreak that has Kansas City officials reconsidering whether to allow restaurants, bars and other large facilities to reopen next week.
In a press conference Thursday, Mayor Quinton Lucas said public health officials are testing residents and staff members at McCrite Plaza at Briarcliff, home to 80 residents. The city has not yet received full results of the tests.
“We cannot say how far the outbreak has gone yet. … We’re not able to say how far in the community it has been either,” Lucas said.
Between this coronavirus outbreak and one at a St. Joseph food plant, Lucas said the city fears “that there might be another outbreak that is growing.”
Lucas said the public conversation surrounding COVID-19 lately had centered too much on “superficial” issues, such as reopening dates and the politics of those decisions.
“What we don’t spend enough time talking about is the reality that we continue to have spread, we continue to have spread among at-risk populations,” Lucas said.
At the news conference, Kansas City Health Department Director Rex Archer said he thought the city had “more cases this week than we’ve had any other week since this outbreak started.”
Given the situation, Lucas said he was no longer sure Kansas City would proceed with the next phase of its reopening, scheduled for May 15. He said the Health Department had planned to issue guidance Friday on the reopening of restaurants, bars, gyms, museums, the Kansas City Zoo, city-maintained playgrounds and government buildings. But because of the outbreak, it’s unclear whether those businesses can reopen as scheduled.
Kansas City had been under a stay-at-home order since March but on Wednesday allowed nonessential businesses that serve the public to resume operations under Lucas’ “10/10/10” rules. Places of worship and many nonessential businesses are limited to having no more than 10 people or 10% of normal capacity in their facilities — whichever is greater. That includes any employees.
The last “10” is a request: that religious institutions and businesses where patrons sit down for more than 10 minutes, like a hair salon, maintain records of who was there. That way, if there is an outbreak of COVID-19, public health officials can trace who might have been exposed and test and isolate them.
Lucas did not mention any plans to close businesses that were allowed to resume operations this week.
Clay and Platte counties allowed businesses to reopen on Monday. Jackson, Johnson and Wyandotte counties are expected to start letting some businesses reopen next Monday.
COVID-19 hits senior facilities
Across the country, senior care facilities like McCrite have been hotbeds for COVID-19 outbreaks because of the number of people living in close proximity. Residents’ age and any underlying health conditions have made them prone to severe cases of the virus.
In the Kansas City metro area, at least 30 facilities have reported COVID-19 cases. At Riverbend Post Acute Rehabilitation in Kansas City, Kansas, the virus has infected 132 residents and staff members and killed 36.
Outbreaks in nursing homes have made up the vast majority of deaths in Wyandotte and Johnson counties.
In March, an employee at McCrite tested positive for COVID-19, but no other employees or residents showed symptoms at the time.
Lucas said Kansas City had been fortunate that outbreaks at senior homes in city limits had been mostly small, but he said this one was different.
Archer said the facility had already isolated residents who had tested positive. He noted studies are finding large numbers of people may contract COVID-19 and spread it without developing enough symptoms to realize it.
“So the way we protect everybody is wearing these masks,” Archer said, “and they’re hot and they’re uncomfortable and not everybody knows how to wear them correctly, but we’re learning.”
With so many recent cases, he said, “we’re not out of the woods yet,” adding that it was not “100% safe out there.”
“I wouldn’t go and participate in a business that wasn’t providing masks for their own employees and wasn’t requiring customers to have masks on — or better yet giving them masks,” he said.
In St. Joseph, 412 employees and contract workers from Triumph Foods pork processing plant tested positive for COVID-19 after testing efforts ramped up last week, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services reported. The workers were not showing symptoms at the time of the tests, the state said. On Wednesday, city officials announced that one of the workers had died.
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 6:16 PM.
