With rural Kansas looking to reopen, doctor remains nervous

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Dr. Beth Oller would like Kansas to remain under a stay-at-home order a while longer, even as some neighbors in her rural northwest county are restless to see business return to normal.

Oller and her husband are family physicians in their late 30s in Stockton, a town of 1,300 people roughly halfway between Kansas City to the east and Denver to the west. They watched as the coronavirus pandemic crept ever closer from those two metropolitan areas, each some 300 miles (480 kilometers) away.

The first positive case in Rooks County was one of Oller's patients, confirmed on Palm Sunday, April 5. A few days after Easter, the doctor's husband displayed mild symptoms. He later tested negative.

Now, as Gov. Laura Kelly prepares to start reopening Kansas businesses next week, Oller worries that the restrictions are being abandoned too soon, with potentially deadly consequences. Meanwhile, neighbors worry that tight restrictions in a rural county with few coronavirus cases will kill their livelihoods.

“I think we need to extend the orders a bit longer," Oller said in a Zoom interview, adding that she is prepared for a reopening that's "not going to look like what those of us in the public health sector would love it to look like.”

Kansas reported more than 3,700 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Wednesday, along with 125 COVID-19 related deaths. Rooks County, with about 5,000 residents, has had six confirmed cases and no deaths. The actual number of coronavirus cases is likely far higher because of limited testing.

Stan Morin said he can operate safely by wearing a mask and limiting customers to one or two at a time in his barbershop a few storefronts from Main Street in Plainville, the largest town in Rooks County, with about 1,900 residents.

The...