By Dewey Terrill
Little Apple Post
After one week of the COVID-19 phased reopening it has been a pretty smooth process in Riley County. Health Officer Julie Gibbs said this past Friday that's what officials are hearing so far. "I know that a lot of businesses that have chosen to open, they've done so in a very safe, controlled manner. They've taken a lot of those requirements and put them right in, and even have gone above and beyond. We've heard about some businesses doing even more than what was asked of them so that's great. Hats off to them. They really care about their customers and their employees as well."
To help determine when it is safe to move to the next phase, Gibbs said they'll look at the percent of positives and more importantly any clusters of cases that might be seen," whether it be in a business or long term care facility we definitely want to monitor that. We've not seen any right now so far." Gibbs added the capabilities of the hospital will be considered, and as of Friday there were only two positive COVID-19 cases in the hospital.
Gibbs said fortunately there has been a pretty young population with positive COVID-19 and that tends to help because they're not being hospitalized.