April 16, 2020
Kingman County continues to have no laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases today. Keep up the great work, Kingman County!
We are not out of the woods, by any means, however…and that is why Governor Kelly is extending the statewide stay-at-home order until Sunday, May 3.
Even though Kingman County has not had any lab-confirmed cases, Kansas is still seeing cases being reported daily. We also cannot forget that Kingman County is directly west of the county reporting the 3rd-largest number of COVID-19 cases so far. It is way too soon to start relaxing the social distancing practices-even when there may be fewer lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases reported on a daily basis, those figures have to continue dropping over an extended period of time before this can happen. COVID-19 is new for everyone, and the jury is still out on when that time will be here.
In the meantime, we must comply with the Governor’s executive order. We cannot wreck progress by returning to business as usual now. We must continue to do only what is essential-only what are critical, life-and-community sustaining functions that are detailed in this attachment. Doing anything beyond at this point will only put our community’s health in risk. Even the “essential” functions need to operate at a level that provides the basics-restaurants, for example, can only be doing takeout, drive-through, and delivery orders-if any restaurants are doing more than that-seating customers inside-this must stop now. Social distancing must still take place in these settings. The businesses who are considered “non-essential” will have to wait longer to open back up to customers. We do realize the economy is taking a hit, but the Federal and Kansas Governments are trying to help those people.
The more we continue going out to do what is only essential, the sooner we will get to where there will be fewer and fewer COVID-19 confirmations being reported. Patience is a virtue we are all probably going to have to develop.
https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/DocumentCenter/View/873/Essential-Activities-and-Essential-Functions-PDF---April-11-2020-