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Weekly Update
Rooks County School Districts’ COVID-19 Update
The Rooks County School Districts are working together with our local health providers to keep our students, staff, and community safe. Once again, COVID-19 cases impact our day-to-day school operations. Each district follows additional sanitation protocols in their buildings. School personnel are continuing to implement many of the cleaning practices that were in place last year. Masks are strongly recommended.
It is always our goal to remain in school. It is important to understand, though, that some of the options we had last year are no longer available this year. During the 2021 Legislative Session, remote learning was a topic of discussion. As a result, school districts are not allowed to move into a phase of remote learning. If health conditions do not allow us to remain in school, districts will be required to shut down.
Current case information
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As of 8/27/2021, there were 14 active cases in Rooks County, with one of those cases being hospitalized.
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Looking at the chart below, one can see the trend over time which is more important in determining future risk than the actual number of active cases. Currently, we are trending up with respect to daily diagnoses.
Current hospital capacity
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Our local hospital has beds available as of today. Rooks County Health Center is again preparing for full capacity, including keeping and caring for critically ill patients in the event no ICU beds are available.
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We urgently need more acute care and ICU beds at our accepting regional facilities such as Hays Med, Salina Regional, Wichita hospitals, Topeka hospitals, and Kansas City hospitals. And in fact, this is true for hospitals in all of our surrounding states. These beds are full and should a patient in Rooks County require transfer - the ability to do so depends on luck (a bed just happens to become available) or distance (the closest available ICU bed for a patient in Abilene last week turned out to be in Wisconsin.)
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Our normal accepting facilities have been on diversion for the last 2 weeks and it is unlikely we will see this change in the near future.
