KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Last week, Kansas' top health official in charge of managing the state's response to the coronavirus pandemic took to Twitter to say the state was heading into unprecedented territory.
On Monday, in a one-on-one interview, Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Dr. Lee Norman spoke with 41 Action News anchor Kevin Holmes about how the state can turn the corner.
The interview took place against the backdrop of the state reporting hundreds of more new COVID-19 cases, which now totals more than 26,300. More than 330 people have now died across the state.
One of the key steps forward, Norman said, was figuring out how the state will solve the education puzzle.
School districts across the metro are still in the process of figuring out the process of reopening their schools.
Dr. Norman said it's important that students get back in school and said it’s up to the districts to find ways to do so.
“I think they just have to cautiously experiment to come up with what the best plan is,” he said. “There’s no way you can mitigate the risk down to zero. There will always be risk going forward.”
However, he did say things like spacing out desks, monitoring how air in schools is handled and wearing masks would help.
Norman referenced a hair salon in Springfield, where two stylists tested positive for the virus but managed to not expose any of the clients because they were wearing masks.
When it came to the issue of contact tracing and how it could violate HIPAA regulations for students, Norman recommended districts across the state have staff and students opt-in to contact tracing.
According to Norman, there are ways to safely protect the privacy of people in schools.
“We have in Kansas what’s called Epitracks; it is HIPAA compliant," Norman said. "It is a contained database and we have privacy top of mind."
He also took the time to address testing saying, “you can never relax.”
Norman said testing asymptomatic people puts additional pressure on health care workers and believes it's better to focus on testing people with symptoms.
“I favor being smart about testing symptomatic people and then being very aggressive about our protection measures,” he said.
Norman also took the time to emphasize the importance of masks.
“Masks work - that’s been asked and answered probably since the 1500s.”
