By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County Health Department Director Nick Baldetti said Friday we won't go back to normal anytime soon.
"There should be a strong expectation by most that social distancing guidelines, at a minimum, are going to be here to stay for quite a long time," Baldetti said. "When I say quite a long time, at minimum I would say through the end of this year."
Does that mean a stay at home order will last that long? No, but there is a caveat to that.
"I don't think that's going to be an expectation throughout the duration of the year," Baldetti said. "Unfortunately, I also don't have very good information to inform specifically for the state of Kansas or for us here in Reno County what that timeline looks like."
We haven't had this virus here in the summer, yet.
"We're just not going to know what it does when it hits warm weather," Baldetti said. "If we allow people to congregate again, we don't know just how robust the spread is going to become. In essence, we have just anecdotal evidence of congregations during this time. That's indicative, for the state of Kansas, of the clusters that are beginning to pop up in our state."
Baldetti is still awaiting wide enough testing ability to get better data before giving any estimate on when restrictions will begin to be lifted.