By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Karla Nichols with the Reno County Health Department told the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday that they will be looking at the numbers they have been using for the school gating criteria more closely in the coming weeks.
"CDC, KDHE has actually in the March and April timeframe, they've actually changed some of those metrics, but when we were talking to a lot of the schools, they wanted to leave those metrics the same so there wasn't changing," Nichols said. "Now that school is done, early June, we'll start looking at those metrics and see if we need to be changing any of those metrics or metrics levels."
The big emphasis continues to be vaccination, as Nichols told the commission Tuesday, it's really a choice of getting vaccinated or having the potential consequences of infection, including potential hospitalization. Though they didn't have a specific metric on the dashboard, Karen Hammersmith with the Health Department has been spot-checking to see if any of those hospitalized were also vaccinated.
"We haven't had as many hospitalizations since we started vaccinating," Hammersmith said. "Those that were in the hospital have not been vaccinated, of all of those that I did research. I would say that's probably around ten that I did research and they have not been vaccinated."
Commissioner Daniel Friesen thought making that number of hospitalizations since vaccine has been available and the number of those who have been vaccinated versus those who have not could help to give the public another reason to consider vaccination.