Watkins attends LEPC meeting

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U.S. Rep. Steve Watkins, a Republican representing Kansas’ 2nd District, visited with local emergency planners via Zoom Thursday morning.

The Local Emergency Planning Committee met twice this week online to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and the local response to it from a number of angles. Watkins asked to join Thursday morning’s meeting before the U.S. House debated and then approved nearly $500 billion in coronavirus spending as unemployment swelled in the U.S. to levels last seen in the Great Depression. The Associated Press reports that nearly 26 million Americans have filed for jobless aid in five weeks.

The biggest part of the bill, about $310 billion, will replenish the Paycheck Protection Program to shore up small- and medium-sized businesses and help them with payroll, rent and other expenses. Stay-at-home orders required some businesses to close and others lost significant traffic as people are staying home other than to purchase necessities. The bill also has $100 billion designated to help hospitals ($75 billion) and enhance testing capabilities in the nation ($25 billion).

Watkins, who is facing re-election in November, said Thursday afternoon that the bill will allocate $21.2 million to Kansas for improved testing capability. He said the first Paycheck Protection Program helped more than 26,000 small businesses in Kansas.

Thursday morning, Watkins said he wanted to understand the concerns of Kansans so he could do his job better.

“I always go into these debates far more confident knowing that I have a better understanding of where folks are on Main Street,” Watkins said.

He encouraged Southeast Kansas small businesses to have their forms ready to turn in to the bank once the funding comes through from Thursday’s House vote on the paycheck program. He said if businesses are unsure of how to apply, his office has been offering assistance.

Charlie Morse, Labette County Emergency Management director, and Jim Zaleski, city of Parsons economic development director, said they have been making businesses aware of the funding that’s coming up and asking them to get their financial information ready. Zaleski urged small businesses to talk to their banks before the federal funding opens up.

Watkins compared the pandemic to steering a ship between two rocky shores, with the infectious disease on one shore and the economic downturn on the other. He wanted to know if Kansans were more concerned with the economy or the virus.

Watkins said he’s talked with Morse, county commissioners, city officials and others in the county and other Kansans in his district. 

He said the economic downturn impacts the health, safety and well being of Kansans.

“I think that the economic numbers in the weeks and months to come are going to be pretty bad. I think the good news on the health side is we’re showing a bit of optimism there. It’s not as, perhaps, contagious as we thought initially, and it’s certainly not as deadly as we thought,” but it’s still dangerous, he said.

Johns Hopkins University shows 2,703,615 positive COVID-19 cases in the world and 190,490 deaths, 50,177 of them in the U.S. The virus is found in 185 countries. So far, 112 Kansans have died of COVID-19 and 2,482 have been infected. To compare, globally 99,000 to 200,000 people die from lower respiratory tract infections caused by flu, according to the University of Edinburgh Global Health Society.

Watkins also noted the national topic of getting back to work after stay-at-home orders expire. He said President Trump has offered guidance for governors, but local and state officials are in a better position to decide when cities and communities should open up.

“Every location has its own medical capabilities that we don’t want to exceed. Every location has its own infection rates,” he said.

Labette County Commissioner Doug Allen thanked Watkins for attending the Zoom meeting. He also thanked the committee for its work and communication during the pandemic. The result has been better than anticipated.

“That’s what counts,” Allen said.

He said his personal opinion is that, “In rural areas like ourselves, we’re probably past the worst medically. And I am concerned and have been concerned about the economic fallout.”

Allen was pleased the paycheck program would get replenished.

Watkins said there are things in the bill he did not like, but he said that’s how the sausage is made.

“It’s going to do far more good than harm. We simply can’t allow small businesses to keep dying, hemorrhaging money to the point to where they’re dead,” Watkins said. When it comes to offering a loan that could become a grant to help small businesses he said he would rather do that than pay unemployment for them.

Watkins then left the Zoom meeting to get to the U.S. House debate.

Lisa Stivers, Labette County Health Department administrator, told committee members the county still has 20 cases with 18 of those cases having recovered. The county has gone nine days without a new infection.

Stivers said she read an article about two deaths in California from COVID-19. One of them died on Feb. 6, the other on Feb. 17, days before the first known death caused by COVID-19 in the U.S. on Feb. 26. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently confirmed the results of testing done on the two. Stivers said this discovery would move the timeline back from where health officials thought the first cases appeared in the U.S. The two who died did not get the virus by travel or from known contact with a COVID-19 patient.

“So they’re saying it was already community spread at that point in California. So that may change some things up,” Stivers said.

Stivers also mentioned contact tracing, which is work that local health departments conduct when a person gets a communicable and reportable disease, such as COVID-19. Health officials need to find out all the infected person’s contacts and notify and possibly quarantine them. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment is gearing up to help counties with contact tracing.

“That is just something that we have always done here and will continue to do,” Stivers said.

Dr. John Wyrick, superintendent of Labette County USD 506, asked Stivers when the health department would allow students to return to school buildings.

“I am not sure on that yet,” Stivers said. The issue will need additional discussion, she said.

Morse said he still has hand sanitizer left from the 144 gallons the county purchased recently. If one of the health or law enforcement agencies in town needs it, he asked them to put in a request for it. He said he still has some masks left from the Kansas Division of Emergency Management. He encouraged health care facilities to continue to work with suppliers to get necessary equipment.

The statewide stay-at-home order will end at 12:01 a.m. May 4, but Morse said he had not yet heard if the governor wanted social distancing to continue.

Morse said he was going to transition his office to the recovery phase for the pandemic. He will still assist in getting needed supplies and help in other ways, including helping businesses with the paycheck program.

“This thing is still a ways from over, but I think we’re on the downhill side of it at this point,” Morse said.