MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Kansas health officials on Tuesday urged communities to take stronger action as more hospital rooms are devoted to the care of coronavirus patients and hundreds of doctors, nurses and other workers arequarantined, leading some surgical procedures to be delayed.
State health department head and Dr. Lee Norman said a system that he likened to air traffic control for coronavirus patients is being put in place so nurses from rural hospitals can make a single call to find a larger hospital that can take their sickest patients. In some cases, nursing and doctors have been spending up to eight hours looking for a large hospital with an opening. But Norman said these rural communities can’t leave it entirely to the state to help.
“Number one, they need to help themselves,” he said during a call with officials from the University of Kansas Hospital. “They have been, I think, very slow to come on board with the anticontagion measures that we know work.”
State law allowed Kansas’ 105 counties to opt out of a mandate for people to wear masks in public issued in July by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, and most did. But the tides are shifting: Dodge City commissioners passed a mask mandate Monday as cases swelled in Ford County, rising by 97 to 4,225 from Friday to Monday.
“That is the first they have had anything like that,” Norman said. “It is not surprising that the numbers are quite high there.”
About a dozen other counties have tightened pandemic-related rules within the past two weeks. In northeast Kansas, Brown, Jackson and Nemaha counties have imposed mask mandates. Together, the three counties saw 770 new coronavirus cases during the two weeks ending Monday, according to the state health department, a 76% increase.
In northeast Kansas, the Stormont Vail Health system has seen its number of hospitalized coronavirus patients steadily climb in the past few weeks, to 81 as of Monday. Spokesman Matt Lara said Tuesday that the hospital has converted two waiting rooms for patients’ families into space for coronavirus patients.
“If we get to a point where we need to expand more, we have some conference room areas that we can turn into care environments,” Lara said. “We have other waiting rooms.”
Stormont Vail reported that as of Monday, it had more than 150 employees and physicians who had active coronavirus cases or were isolated and on leave because of contact with someone who had coronavirus. The system’s president and CEO, Dr. Robert Kenagy, called it a “public health crisis.”
Cindy Samuelson, spokeswoman for the Kansas Hospital Association, said it has heard of hospitals converting other spaces that are not getting use because of the pandemic, such as chapels and cafeterias, into space for COVID-19 patients.
The University of Kansas Hospital, meanwhile, has 187 workers, including physicians, nurses and support staff, out as of Tuesday after testing positive. Another 200 aren’t at work while they await test results. Hospital spokeswoman Jill Chadwick said most are being infected in the community, not at work.
She said the hospital also is identifying and delaying up to 20 surgeries per day to free up bed space as its number of coronavirus swells, hitting 124 on Tuesday.
In the Wichita area, Wesley Medical Center is treating an all-time high of 100 coronavirus patients and Ascension Via Christi St. Francis is caring for 130 COVID-19 patients. Wesley doubled its COVID-19 capacity in the past week and a half, and the entire fifth floor at St. Francis is now designated for coronavirus patients.
Jennifer Rogers, who manages two of the fifth floor coronavirus units at St. Francis, begged the community to step up and help in a blog that was posted Tuesday on the hospital’s website.
“My eyes see a hospital that I don’t even recognize; staff who are tired, feeling defeated, and want to do more, but physically and mentally cannot,” she wrote, adding: “Please help us fight before we see you in the hospital.”
Meanwhile, the state has contracted with hotels in seven communities to house people who must quarantine but can’t do it effectively at home. The hotels are in Dodge City; Emporia; Gardner; Kansas City, Kansas; Lansing, and Salina, and people can get access through their local health departments.
“The most effective way to slow the spread of the virus is to isolate or quarantine yourself away from others in your household,” said Devan Tucking, human services branch director, Kansas Division of Emergency Management. “We know it is not always possible to isolate or quarantine someone in a single-family residence where people must share a kitchen, a bathroom, laundry room and other spaces.”
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