By RON FIELDS
Post News Network
The end of contact tracing by the state and some school districts could be the "pivot point" of nearly two years of dealing with COVID-19, according to a Hays doctor.
Dr. Heather Harris, chief medical officer at HaysMed, told the Post News Network that contact tracing might lead to more people treating the illness like the flu or RSV — moving from a pandemic to an endemic state.
"Patients do not have to hide from being sick or hide their sick kids in fear of quarantining their friends and family," she said. "Everyone can stay home when they are sick which will help the spread of COVID or any viral illness. If the symptoms are mild in a healthy vaccinated adult or child, then testing is probably not needed — and this will decrease the impact on overwhelmed clinics and testing centers."
Harris said those health care centers have seen a spike in testing requests during the latest coronavirus surge, which has seen a tenth of Ellis County's overall total cases diagnosed just during the month of January.
"If your symptoms are mild, it looks like a cold and you're vaccinated, I don't think you need to be tested every time," she said. "If you wouldn't have gone to the doctor before (the pandemic) for those symptoms, stay home and get back when you're well ... unless you're elderly or fragile."
More severe symptoms — sore throat or a temperature — could require an evaluation by a doctor, she added.
Like every hospital, HaysMed is still seeing heavy COVID-related hospitalizations as the omicron variant of COVID displaces the previous delta variant — generally between 20 and 25 COVID inpatients on any given day. The vast majority of those are unvaccinated.
"The underlying message is that almost two years into this, we have a vaccine we know will protect people from being hospitalized or dying," Harris said. "We need people doing the right thing."
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Statewide, the number of COVID-related hospitalizations has jumped — especially pediatric admissions — putting a strain on health care workers.
That strain could be eased in Ellis County with the reopening of a temporary testing site at a local shopping center.
With the traditional flu season well underway, Harris said it's often difficult to determine what is actually causing illness. And with contact tracing and the resulting mandated quarantines ending in Hays, COVID could become just another viral infection for most. Hays USD 489 will discuss a policy change to end contact tracing Monday.
"You could test positive for flu and COVID or strep and COVID ... and it's hard to tell which is making you sick," she said. "It's hard not to be exposed to COVID. ... But if you're a healthy adult with a mild cough, stay home your five days and get better."
Severity of symptoms related to COVID have recently varied greatly, Harris added, with variables such as vaccination status, booster status and levels of immunity from previous contraction of COVID all playing a role.
"The current data shows that omicron may have more mild symptoms. We will not know for sure the impact of this virus locally for one to three more weeks," she said. "We have an older community and vaccine rates in northwest Kansas continue to be at 50 percent — low — so there should be some concern that we will continue to see more patients that may have severe disease and require hospitalization due to number of patients that are becoming ill with our local vaccine status and the age of our local population."
She added that treatment options are expanding for patients in the highest risk categories, as well, which could help decrease the need for hospital care and help alleviate a rising statewide death toll.
But Harris also cautioned the toll of the latest COVID surge won't be known for weeks, noting hospitalizations generally increase a couple of weeks after the curve peaks — and deaths begin to increase a couple of weeks after that.
