By KEN CARPENTER
Great Bend Post
The Barton County Board of Health which is made up of the five members of the Barton County Commission met at the courthouse on Thursday morning and agreed to hand over investigations into positive COVID-19 cases to KDHE, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. The job of investigating positive cases has been handled by the county's health department since the outbreak of the pandemic in March of 2020. That investigation includes identifying when the illness began. That process can be time-consuming for Health Department staff.
KDHE has reported a spike of 22,000 positive COVID cases from Monday to Wednesday of this week. County Health Director Karen Winkelman told the Board that the Barton County Health Department is aware of 225 cases currently in the county and her department is becoming overwhelmed in contacting citizens who have tested positive for the virus.
Board member Jennifer Schartz expressed her support for allowing the state to take over the local COVID investigations.
“As the Board of Health, our primary concern is the health of our citizens, Schartz said. “Our secondary priority is keeping the Barton County Health Department functioning. If we don’t keep the Barton County Health functioning, we have let down every citizen that we have. Karen has asked for some intervention because her staff is very close to the edge.”
County Counselor Patrick Hoffman told the Board that the decision to route COVID investigations to the state can be reversed.
“We have assurances from KDHE in writing from them that we can undo this if we do it,” Hoffman said. “I think my opinion of the law is that clearly the county health is the [county’s] responsibility and we can take it back.”
The Board voted unanimously to give KDHE the responsibility beginning February 1st.