Sedgwick County relaxing COVID-19 rules on restaurants, bars, stores and sports events
Editor’s note: an earlier version of this story had an incorrect number to call to schedule an appointment for a vaccine. The Sedgwick County Health Department number is 316-660-1029. Vaccines are limited to those 80 and older.
In a sign that things are getting better on the COVID front, Sedgwick County’s health officer is relaxing restrictions on bars and restaurants, stores, mass gatherings and sports.
Dr. Garold Minns and County Counselor Mike Pepoon announced several changes to the county’s anti-COVID orders Tuesday, including:
▪ Relaxing the curfew on bars and restaurants from the current 11 p.m. closing time to midnight.
▪ Raising the limits on mass gatherings from the current 25 people to 100.
▪ Retail stores will be allowed to operate at 75 percent of their fire code capacity, up from 50 percent in the current order.
▪ Bars, restaurants and fitness centers will be allowed to have 150 people inside at a time, or 75 percent of their occupancy rating, whichever is lower. That’s an increase from a cap of 100 people or 50 percent of fire code capacity.
▪ Youth and adult recreational sports will be allowed to have four spectators per participant, up from the current limit of two.
▪ Venues with a capacity of 1,000 people can ask for Health Department for exceptions to exceed the 100-person limit on gatherings.
The new order is scheduled to take effect this Sunday in time for the Super Bowl and remain in effect until March 20.
Minns said he’s willing to relax the order because the indicators of COVID spread in the community are trending downward and new cases have “markedly decreased.”
He said those reductions in transmission “seem sustained over the last month.”
“As a result I felt it was reasonable to relax on some of the restrictions in the county order to hopefully improve the situation for small businesses and other entities that have suffered through this pandemic,” Minns said.
The mandate that people wear face masks in public spaces and maintain 6 feet of social distancing when possible are not changing and Minns cautioned that if people stop doing those things, cases could rise again and he’d be forced to reinstate the restrictions he’s relaxing.
And while the introduction of vaccination is a hopeful sign for the future, “not that many people have been vaccinated yet compared to the size of our population,” and it will be months before that happens to the extent where there’s large-scale immunity.
County commissioners may decide to tweak Minns’ order during their regular meeting Wednesday.
Commissioners Sarah Lopez and Lacey Cruse indicated they would rather keep the number of sports attendees at two per participant, instead of raising it to four.
“I come from a sports family so I’m soccer and everything else,” Lopez said. “As it stands now, I go into an indoor soccer facility and there’s 700 people in one room, in one big room, but in one room. My concern is going from two to four, what that could grow (to).”
On the other side, Commissioner Jim Howell supported dropping the bar curfew entirely, although he conceded he doesn’t know what occurs in bars and clubs between midnight and 2 a.m.
“The idea that you’re going to walk in and it’s shoulder to shoulder filled with people not wearing masks, that would be in violation of the health order anyway, and I would not support them basically ignoring the health order,” he said.
However, he added “If they’re open to midnight and they’re social distancing and wearing masks, I’m not sure the two hours necessarily makes a huge difference.”
Minns pushed back on that front, saying it’s impractical to expect patrons of bars and restaurants that serve alcohol to be wearing masks, because they’re eating and drinking when they’re there. He said that many other cities still have their bars shut down entirely.
“I think we’ve been pretty flexible here compared to most of the other urban areas in the country, and even the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) has declared that bars should be closed,” Minn said.
Vaccines limited
The key to reopening Sedgwick County is the progress made on a mass vaccination plan, which officials said is improving in the Wichita area after a slow start driven by a limited supply provided by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
Last week, the Sedgwick County Health Department received 5,700 doses and officials expect a weekly supply of around 7,000 each week from the state.
The county has opened vaccines to health care workers and people 80 years old or older. By the end of the day Monday, it had administered 16,020 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, including first and second doses.
“I think we know anecdotally that, between the 16,000 we’ve done and what the hospitals have done, we’re well over 20,000 doses dispensed in the community already,” Assistant County Manager Tim Kaufman said.
It’s unclear exactly how many of those doses are second doses, but the 20,000-doses figure suggests the vaccination rate in Sedgwick County is below 5% of the county’s adult population of roughly 380,000.
Vaccines are open by appointment only and the county isn’t scheduling more appointments than the number of doses it has available.
Kaufman said to avoid a lengthy wait in the cold, people with vaccines scheduled should not show up too early to their appointments.
“It’s very important that folks not come to their appointment more than 15 minutes in advance,” Kaufman said. “We have enough space at Intrust Bank Area for those being vaccinated and then for the observation time — 15 to 30 minutes — and anyone who arrives significantly earlier than their appointment time may slow down that process.”
“I know that there are concerns that people would have to stand outside and wait,” Kaufman said. “Generally, that’s related to folks that arrive much earlier than 15 minutes before the appointment time. So that’s why we’re using the appointment scheduling process, so people don’t have to come significantly earlier than necessary.”
For help scheduling an appointment, call Sedgwick County officials at 316-660-1029 or visit sedgwickcounty.org/covid-19/vaccine/schedule/.
This story was originally published February 2, 2021 at 11:17 AM.
