Sedgwick County manager, others overseeing coronavirus response are hit with COVID-19
Three officials guiding Sedgwick County’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, including the county manager, have come down with COVID-19 themselves, it was confirmed Monday.
County Manager Tom Stolz said he hasn’t been to the office since testing positive a week ago and he began experiencing noticeable symptoms Friday.
“It’s a really weird deal,” Stolz said. “Sometimes you feel really, really good and sometimes you feel really, really bad.
“I can’t recommend it. Wear masks and stay distant. That’s still my message.”
Commission Chairman Pete Meitzner and commissioners Lacey Cruse, Jim Howell and David Dennis confirmed they were tested last week as a precaution. All four said their results came back negative.
Commissioner Michael O’Donnell did not return a phone call seeking comment.
None of the commissioners knew whether the Health Department plans to declare a coronavirus cluster at the county’s offices on the third floor of the Sedgwick County Courthouse.
Concerns about COVID-19 in the courthouse began to surface early last week after one employee tested positive. Several members of the management staff were tested and at least two other positive cases have surfaced since, commissioners confirmed.
None of the officials were able to say for sure how the disease got into the county offices.
But some did note the first employee to get noticeably sick had been at the Extension Center — the county’s remote site for public comments — during the commission’s Sept. 16 meeting.
At that meeting, approximately 50 people — few of whom wore masks — showed up to protest mask mandates and other public health orders issued by county Health Officer Dr. Garold Minns.
Many were the same individuals who had spoken the previous week to the Wichita City Council during a larger rally urging residents to unmask.
Minns’ order requires people to wear protective face masks in most public settings and imposed early closing times and occupancy restrictions for bars and nightclubs in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.
At that same Sept. 16 meeting, commissioners voted to request that Minns loosen the curfew on drinking establishments from 11 p.m. to midnight, which he did. Many of the bar and nightclub owners who requested the change complained their businesses are in peril and had stayed open until 2 a.m. the previous weekend in defiance of the order.
Stolz said the virus is community spread and he doesn’t want to blame any individual or groups for him and his colleagues getting COVID-19.
“It was our turn, I guess,” he said.
He said it could be just a result of working in the courthouse where people are coming and going all day.
“Some of the people that I see, they don’t like the mask and they don’t like to distance,” he said. “When you have an open building . . . I think things are going to get in. Kids are back in school and people are kind of living their lives out there. It’s a virus, we’re in a pandemic, it’s going to spread.”
Stolz said he and his colleagues who caught COVID-19 will be out until at least Oct. 2, although they’ve have been working remotely from home when they feel up to it.
He said his main symptoms have been fatigue and headaches, with a low-grade fever and some coughing.
“It’s not fun,” he said. “I hope that people are careful and I’m not going to stop doing what I do as far as emphasizing masking and distancing when I’m lucky enough to come back to work.”
Commissioner Jim Howell said all the employees who’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19 had diligently followed the guidelines on wearing masks.
“As far as I know, every precaution that was supposed to be followed was followed,” Howell said. “Masks don’t stop the virus, they slow it down. They reduce the likelihood of transmission but they don’t stop it. That is what I think this proves.”
Cruse said it’s “just such a hard situation.”
“The divisiveness around this problem is kind of heartbreaking really,” she said. “I just wish that people would understand that we’ve got to work together (and) masks are about protecting other people.”
County spokeswoman Kate Flavin said the Health Department is still investigating the outbreak and has not yet decided whether to declare it an official COVID-19 cluster.
She also said anyone considered to have been a “close contact” with someone who tested positive has been instructed to work from home for 14 days “regardless of whether they’ve tested negative.”
This story was originally published September 29, 2020 at 5:01 AM.
