‘We had a bad week’ for COVID-19, Kansas Gov. Kelly says; suggests delaying football
Gov. Laura Kelly said Monday “we had a bad week” for coronavirus COVID-19 infections and urged Kansans to take extra precautions with the start of the college and school year.
Kelly announced that statewide 1,545 new cases of COVID-19 have surfaced since Friday, along with reporting seven new deaths.
That raised the state numbers to 38,401 infections, 2,181 hospitalizations and 426 deaths since the coronavirus surfaced in Kansas, she said. Now, every county in the state has had at least one case, she said.
“To make matters worse, as college students returned to campus, we’ve experienced a rise in clusters stemming from mass gatherings at six of our universities in Kansas and at one fraternity,” she said.
Kelly didn’t identify the affected universities, but did say the fraternity cluster involved 13 infected students at Kansas State University in Manhattan.
“One college student has been hospitalized with what is suspected to be multi system inflammatory syndrome, a rare syndrome related to COVID-19,” she said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, that can lead to inflammation of “heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs.”
Kelly said it’s easy to become desensitized amid the ever-increasing numbers of new cases and deaths, but said Kansans need to become more, not less, vigilant about wearing protective masks, social distancing and sanitation to try to cut down on infections.
She called upon adult Kansans to set an example for the schoolchildren. While children are less likely to become gravely ill with COVID-19, they can catch and spread the virus to parents and teachers who are at greater risk if they catch it.
She also recommended that universities and schools that decide to offer sports in the fall flip their schedules to have low-risk sports like cross country, tennis and golf in the fall.
She recommended holding off playing high-contact sports like football until the spring, when chances are better that there will be a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Kelly did not say whether she’ll try to implement that by executive order, noting that she’s not sure whether she has the necessary authority.
This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 5:37 PM with the headline "‘We had a bad week’ for COVID-19, Kansas Gov. Kelly says; suggests delaying football."
