A number of eastern Kansas counties have stay-at-home orders to keep the coronavirus from spreading. But some Kansans appear to still be on the move, particularly in western Kansas.
Unacast, a data company, is able to tell how states and counties are doing with social distancing via cellphone data. Overall, Kansas has a B. But some western counties, including Gray, Ford, Clark, Meade and Seward, received Fs.
That might be because there’s only one confirmed coronavirus case in the western part of the state - a man from Oregon who visited Ford County.
In Garden City, government offices and businesses are closed, but people are still gathering in parks.
In Liberal, Seward County Public Information Officer Eli Svaty says street traffic hasn’t changed much.
“It looks like more businesses are running as normal but there is definitely a marked difference in parks and things like that,” Svaty said.
Svaty says southwest Kansas may have a bad grade because thousands are still going to work at meatpacking plants.
As the Kansas News Service reported Wednesday, the head of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment predicts the state will have about 400 cases of COVID-19 by the end of the month – that as the state reported 126 cases, two out-of-state cases and three deaths.
Norman said the state has ordered 100 ventilators from a national stockpile of medical equipment. That’s on top of ventilators that hospitals have already requested.
“We’ve already put in, in anticipation of that to get our share, quote-unquote, of the ventilators,” Norman said.
Norman says health care workers are running low on protective equipment like masks.
At least a dozen counties have “stay-at-home” orders,meaning people should only leave their homes for essential duties.
Those stay-at-home orders have resulted in an onslaught of calls requesting unemployment benefit information to the Kansas Department of Labor.
Labor Secretary Delia Garcia says most were from people who hung up and called back repeatedly to avoid waiting on hold.
The agency has doubled its call-center staff to deal with the surge in claims. But Garcia is urging those who can file online to do so.
“If we can just get people to use our website at www-get-kansas-benefits-dot-gov that is the best way to get through this,” Garcia said.
The coronavirus outbreak is also causing a spike in demand at the state’s food banks.
Gene Hallinan, who works for Harvesters, a network that provides food to 16 counties in northeast Kansas, said the organization distributed 12 thousand cases of food on Monday -- the most in one day.
“There’s just so many businesses that are closed right now, and so those individuals, those families are needing a lot of help,” Hallinan said, adding that fewer people are volunteering to sort and package food due to county stay-at-home orders and the statewide ban on gatherings of 10 or more.
She says the best way to help is to donate money to help food banks buy more supplies.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.
