LAWRENCE — The looming expiration date on Kansas’ statewide stay-at-home order worries Mary and Gary House of southeast Kansas.
Though they’re staying in as much as possible now, once life returns to normal that will change. Gary, age 79, is an attorney who defends criminal cases in Chautauqua, Montgomery and Elk counties.
He thinks of the exposure to the novel coronavirus he could face in a single jury selection.
“They may bring in 70 or 80 prospective jurors to question,” he said. “So, you’re just around a lot of people.”
The Houses want Kansas to heed the advice of epidemiologists who say states need widespread and reliable access to testing before reopening their economies.
Yet as of Sunday, Kansas had the lowest rate of testing among all 50 states. About six of every 1,000 residents have been tested.
The Kansas News Service compared total tests per state — compiled daily by the COVID Tracking Project — to 2019 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“What we’re really concerned about is there’s not enough testing,” Mary House said. “If you want to get tested, you ought to be able to get tested.”
Kansas upgraded its testing equipment when the pandemic hit and can handle up to 1,000 tests at the state laboratory in Topeka per day. But a shortage of specialized nose swabs and other related materials have slowed the actual pace.
County health agencies hit similar hurdles. Some hospitals and clinics relying on private labs for testing report backlogs that keep patients waiting on results anywhere from a few days to more than a week.
Gov. Laura Kelly has signaled her administration won’t let up on the stay-at-home order she issued in March until testing access can reliably track the disease, even though daily death counts are projected to decline in Kansas in the coming days and weeks.
“If we move forward prematurely,” before testing supplies and contact-tracing capacity are robust and sustainable, she said Monday, “then we will inevitably find ourselves facing a second wave.”
Health secretary Lee Norman said Monday that the state lab had just received 5,000 additional swabs from the federal government amid the concerns about COVID-19 spreading in meatpacking plants of southwest Kansas. Kansas dental offices have also begun producing them on their 3D printers.
County challenges
The state has nearly 2,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, but the real number could be many times higher. Only about 19,000 people had been tested statewide as of Monday.
