KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City, Missouri, City Council unanimously approved $1.5 million dollars Thursday for more COVID-19 testing and to hire contact tracers.
It's money some council members said couldn't come soon enough.
"Because we’re so far behind," 3rd District Councilwoman Melissa Robinson said. "This is something we should’ve been doing in April, and now it’s here in June and we have a spike."
More than 2,100 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in KCMO, according to the latest figures from the Missouri Department for Health and Senior Services.
The current phase of the city's economic reopening expires in 10 days, so KCMO leaders are hoping to avoid a setback.
"We want businesses to be able to stay open and continue to be open and be viable, because people that are unemployed and get evicted — that’s a health hazard," KCMO Health Department Director Dr. Rex Archer said. "People that can’t feed their families; that’s a health hazard."
Archer recommends the city make it mandatory for people to wear a face mask whenever they're inside a building within city limits, advice that is backed up by recommendations for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It’s the right thing to do to protect our high-risk folks from ending up in the hospital, and it’s the least we can do to take care of each other," Archer said.
Mayor Quinton Lucas is considering adopting such a measure, but knows it would be hard for KCMO to go it alone and suggests "that all counties look into it and not just kind of saying, 'Well, you know, we suggest you do it.'"
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson already ended all state-imposed restrictions 10 days ago, so there will not be a mandatory mask order coming from the state.
"If cities want to do that and they want to require that other citizens who live there (to wear masks), well that’s why they have elections in those areas," Parson said. "If people don’t like it, they can change it. If they like it, they keep the same people in place."
If masks do become required KCMO, enforcement would be similar to when the city imposed a stay-at-home order in March, where city officials would educate individuals who were caught violating the ordinance.
"For businesses, though, we can take a stronger approach," Archer said. "We can have, like we have with other businesses, when we get complaints, we contact the business (and) we asked them to do things differently."
Lucas is expected to announce the city's next steps as the COVID-19 pandemic continues no later than Monday.
