New COVID-19 restrictions involving limits on bars, restaurants and gatherings may be coming to the Metro area as soon as next week. Public health directors in Kansas City and Jackson, Clay and Platte counties in Missouri and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas today released a joint Call to Action to fight the surge in cases, which threaten to overwhelm area hospitals. They urged all elected leaders to take the following steps:
- Continuing mask mandates for all activities outside the home and broadening enforcement
- Limiting in-person gatherings
- Requiring bars and restaurants to close by 10 p.m. and/or imposing occupancy limits for both indoor and outdoor dining
- Limiting outdoor and indoor entertainment
- Limiting attendees and imposing social distancing requirements on recreational and youth sports
- Requiring businesses and organizations to ensure social distancing.
Chief medical officers from The University of Kansas Health System, Liberty Hospital, North Kansas City Hospital, Truman Medical Centers/University Health, Saint Luke’s Health System, Olathe Medical Center and Advent Health/Shawnee Mission gathered for a virtual news conference to brief area reporters and answer media questions. The entire reporter news briefing is above.
All of the hospitals publicly support the new measures, as all report record numbers of COVID-19 patients, and bed capacity is being stretched to the limit. The latest count is 432 patients over all of the hospitals, and the number is constantly rising. Most are turning away patients from rural areas and delaying some elective surgeries in an effort to make more beds available. They fear that unless the Metro area gets the number of cases under control, we will begin to look like New York earlier this year or El Paso right now. Their biggest concern is hospitalizations always follow new cases by about a week, and the next couple of weeks may bring more COVID-19 cases than some can handle. They think they are beginning to see patients infected at Halloween and noted that casual home gatherings are big disease spreaders. They’re afraid of what is coming after Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The doctors support the call for closing restaurants at 10 pm, saying people tend to behave less responsibly the longer they are there. They point out it’s not so much the time on the clock, but the behavior that’s causing problems. They note the average age of hospitalized patients has dropped, but are still seeing people in their 20’s all the way to their 90’s.
When asked if the hospitals are worried more about bed capacity or staff capacity, several of the CMOs suggested it’s both. They noted staff are becoming worn out, and many are missing work after catching the virus in the community, not in the hospitals themselves. Hospitals, they say, are the safest places in any city, despite the number of COVID-19 patients, because of strict infection control measures. They are worried that the current surge in patients is leaving less room for other patients with critical needs.
All the CMOs agreed that it’s good to see the area hospitals, normally competitors, rally together to fight a common enemy. When the numbers come down, they say, that’s when we’ll know the efforts are working. They say how we react will define our region for a long time. They agree the simplest way to control the virus spread is for everyone to observe the pillars of infection prevention, which go with us everywhere.
