Riley County has gone three days without a new positive COVID-19 test as of Wednesday afternoon.
Health and safety officials updated the public online Wednesday. 20 of a total of 55 positive COVID cases remain active and one Riley County resident remains hospitalized. Health Department Director Julie Gibbs says the re-opening process has started smoothly, with most businesses adhering to occupancy, distance and other requirements.
“Please keep in mind, those businesses who are following the best practices are far less likely to have a COVID positive case associated with their business,” Gibbs says. “And, therefore, are more likely to stay open.”
She encourages the public to continue mitigation efforts, including wearing cloth masks, throughout the re-opening as well. Gibbs says the re-opening process will progress based on local data and following the governor’s guidance, adding that the process could last longer than the minimum 14 day period for some phases.
Public Health Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Andrew Adams also says they’ve received 4,300 responses to their community survey, 4,100 of who were county residents. The goal of the survey is to get a full picture of the impact of the pandemic on the local community.
Five percent of respondents reported experiencing COVID-like symptoms and 15 percent of those said they’d be willing to get tested.
“We’re working behind the scenes with our swab site partners to figure out the best way, the most efficient way, to contact those people back who were willing to be contacted again,” Adams says, “and to get them […] swabbed to be tested if possible.”
Adams says they have 20 staff and volunteers working on contact tracing following an established protocol in addition to assistance from their partnership with the student outbreak response team (SORT) at Kansas State University.
“We’ve trained them on contact tracing long before this pandemic kind of with this situation in mind,” Adams says. “They’ve been volunteering their time over the last month or so to help us out with the contact tracing process and procedures.”
Adams says with the help they have now, they should have sufficient tracing capacity to continue down the re-opening process at this time.
Health and safety agencies have also seen decreases in calls for service amid the pandemic. Assistant RCPD Director Kurt Moldrup says part of that is the result of decreased numbers in town as many students did not return from Spring Break. While a good thing, he says he doesn’t want numbers to be held low because of fears of the system being overwhelmed.
“They’re not overwhelmed, EMS can respond and we want to get to the medical issues early, as always to treat them,” says Moldrup. “Call 911 when you have an emergency and see your doctor when you have a medical issue as well as go to the ER if you feel that you need to.”
Gibbs closed by encouraging residents to stay safe and stay the course on mitigation efforts even with Mother’s Day approaching.
“Hopefully we’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Gibbs says. “I think that we’ve already started to see that with the lifting of the stay-at-home order, but we just need to go about it now slowly.”
“As we are opening our businesses in a very controlled, slow manner we need to act the same as individuals.”
