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By
NICK GOSNELL
Hutch
Post
HUTCHINSON,
Kan. —&nbsp;In a Zoom video posted to Buhler USD 313's Facebook Tuesday night, Reno County Health Department Interim Director Karen Hammersmith explained the important numbers that will help shape policy for how open schools are this fall in Reno County."It really goes with the positive test rate in your community," Hammersmith said. "You can get your gating criteria from that positive test rate."As of the Tuesday afternoon report on the Reno County COVID-19 dashboard, the overall positive test rate in the county is 10.93%, but if you take out the cases related to the Hutchinson Correctional Facility, the positive test rate is 7.13%.Under the gating criteria provided on the video Tuesday, the county would be under a yellow condition, as the positive test rate is between 5.7% and 10% for the community outside of the prison population and there are 50 non-prison related active cases in the county. The case count alone would put the county in the green, but in combination with the positive test rate, they would be in the yellow. Hammersmith contends that such numbers would only be valid if testing were done differently."We are only testing patients that we feel like are going to probably have COVID," Hammersmith said. "We're testing symptomatic patients that are sick, presenting with symptoms. Of course, our positive test rate is going to be a little bit more elevated, because we're not doing community testing. We're not trying to test people out and about with no symptoms that haven't been surrounded by anybody."There is a belief that if community testing were done, that the positive test rate would be lower."This positive test rate, it makes a lot of sense, if we can reach a minimum testing percentage by the month," said Buhler USD 313 Superintendent Cindy Couchman. "Our goal is obviously to get to 1.8% of our population tested for every two-week period, which is like 3.6% of our population."Until that threshold of testing is reached, new case count numbers will carry the day. In other words, the number to watch at this point is new case count. It is not currently available as its own statistic on the county's dashboard. "This is a two week number of community cases," Couchman said. "This is going to be hand calculated by D.J. and the Health Department and worked to give to us, this whole Reno County team of the Health Department, the Hutchinson Clinic, Dr. Pauly and the Reno County Superintendents to take this data."The County will be in the green as long as it remains under 56 new active non-prison cases. Between 57 and 61, there will be consultation with the Health Department. From 62 to 113 would be a yellow condition, 114 to 118 would be another consultation, 119 to 170 would put the county in the orange and over 175 would be a red condition. Again, this is all general population two-week case count, leaving aside any cases that may be active at Hutchinson Correctional Facility.Between the lack of that specific number being readily available on the dashboard as of Wednesday morning and the fact that each color threshold has a gray area between them, a lot of the power for the decision making will remain in the hands of the local superintendents and their school boards.

Reno County gating criteria not hard and fast