By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas U.S. Senator Jerry Moran held a Zoom call Monday afternoon with leaders from throughout Reno County. Though there were many topics discussed, ultimately the theme of the call went back to the need for much more testing availability to get the best data to decide when to reopen the economy in a safe and measured way and to the success thus far, for those with access to it while it had funds, of the Paycheck Protection Program.
"We need to get back to something closer to normal as quickly as we can," Moran said. "We can't do it precipitously. We ought to do it with thought. We ought to do it in phases and the decisions ought to be made, not in Washington D.C., but more closely to home. I don't know when that day is, but our country cannot afford, people cannot afford to have the shutdown that we have, to the degree that we have it, for a long time."
At this point, Reno County medical providers say they are ready to be a testing hub, they just need the supplies to do it. From the Reno County Health Department, to Hutchinson Regional Medical Center, to the Hutchinson Clinic, they all are just asking for the opportunity to test widely enough to know what they are dealing with.
"There's a platform that's made by Abbott," said Mike Heck with the Hutchinson Clinic. "We have thirteen of these platforms that we could deploy throughout the community."
Hutchinson Regional Medical Center also has the machines, but they all need the paper to do the test on.
"We need that test kit that goes in the Abbott platform," Heck said. "Swabs are not a choke point for us. Last I checked, we had three to four thousand of them that we've prepared and made ourselves here in our lab."
One advantage to being able to do the tests in Hutchinson, if they can get the supplies, is that there is some concern that false negatives may result when swabs have to be shipped to remote laboratories for testing when the viral load in patients is lower.
As to the Paycheck Protection Program funds availability, Moran believes the money will come and likely soon.
"All but nine banks in Kansas are participating in this program," Moran said Monday. "I don't know what the credit union numbers are, but it is broadly being used, and I think making a difference for lots of small businesses. It was expected that even as of tomorrow, and it still may turn out true, that we will restock it, stock that fund and expected to add $360 billion to that SBA program. I've said publicly and would predict here to you that will happen."
It can happen as soon as Tuesday as long as it is passed with unanimous consent, but if there is a single objection, then Senators would need to go back to Washington to vote, which might delay it to later in the week. Moran is in support of this restock, but he signaled that he would have to give additional consideration to spending beyond that.
"The Federal Reserve, while they have lots of power and the Treasury has lots of capabilities, they are not unending," Moran said. "They are not ad infinitum. My view is going to start narrowing about what it is more we can do to keep spending money on, because there is another crisis coming that follows this one and that is how do you pay for what we just did?"
In order for the money to be there to pay for the work of government, the economy needs to be running and the key to that, in the short and longer run, appears to be enough testing to stamp out small outbreaks as they arise in the country and right now, Kansas hasn't had enough tests to accomplish that.