Sedgwick County discusses plans to re-open community

It’s been 25 days of the stay at home order for Sedgwick County and with Governor Laura Kelly extending the statewide quarantine until May 3rd; county commissioners are debating whether or not they should extend the county order past that May 3rd date, since Sedgwick County is one of the state’s top hot spots.

Now county commissioners are planning to move forward.

Sedgwick County commissioner, Lacey Cruse said, “I don’t see us extending it unless something changes and we see a lot of spikes. As of things today and how things are looking, I would say that we really want to do what we can to open things back up.”

Cruse is hoping they don’t have to extend the stay at home order and they can begin re-opening businesses. While county manager Thomas Stolz says the main goal is to not overwhelming hospitals.

“I’m hoping that we’re coming out of the hunker down, stay at home phase." said Stolz. "And we’re now going to enter into a phase where the virus is still in the community, still active, but we can manage it. As long as the infection rate stays manageable and we don’t see huge.”

Sedgwick County commissioner, Pete Meitzner says the public needs to remember there is no vaccine or effective treatment for the virus yet and still needs to practice social distancing as more people are allowed to gather.

“If we still have a gathering number, maybe 10 goes to 20, 10 goes to 50, then everybody can be in business," said Meitzner. "But until then, we’ve got to be really careful with spacing.”

Stolz said, “It’s almost like you’ve got a valve in your hand and you open that valve as much as you can until you begin to get troublesome indicators and then maybe you close the vale up a little bit.”

The Sedgwick County commissioners will meet with the county health board on Wednesday to discuss options moving forward. Then a vote on the 29th will determine if an extension of the stay at home order is necessary, or if they can plan to slowly re-open more businesses.