By
NICK GOSNELL
Hutch
Post
HUTCHINSON,
Kan. — 
Though the sample size is small, there is reason to believe that there is communal transmission of COVID-19 in Reno County."We do have one case of our nine where we are unable to track the point of contraction, which would suggest that there is an aspect of communal transmission within our community," said Health Department Director Nick Baldetti. "There are two others of our nine that we know was person to person. The rest seem to be associated with travel."Some of the people who have gotten sick in Reno County have recovered."Two of those cases have gone through the full timeline in terms of being recovered," Baldetti said. "I'm happy to report that two of our nine have met the disease investigation guidelines in terms of being recovered."To be clear, just because you or someone you love gets sick doesn't mean they're going to die. It does have a higher death rate than other seasonal conditions like the flu, but as long as we can keep the hospitals from getting overrun, there's a good chance any individual will survive, unless they already had other comorbidities."It's important to know or at least understand that, being a novel virus, there's not a large enough sample set of those who have recovered long-term to know if there's any long-standing ramifications of having contracted COVID-19," Baldetti said. The biggest point of the social distancing requirements that we remain under is to keep the rate of people who are sick down to the point where health care workers can manage the caseload. It will likely be weeks before we can begin to reopen life to the degree it was prior to the stay at home orders issued a few days ago.

Potential communal transmission, but also recoveries in Reno County