COVID-19 cases spike in Cloud County: close contacts top 150 people

The number of positive COVID-19 cases in Cloud County has now climbed to 11.
Three new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed by the Cloud County Health Department.
That uptick in numbers, combined with a close contact list of more than 150 people from a positive case in Republic County, has prompted Health Department administrator Brandi Bray to consider this a community spread.
Health Department employees have been busy since Tuesday afternoon attempting to notify about 150 individuals, who were considered close contacts to the positive case from Republic County, that they need to put themselves in a mandatory quarantine for 14 days.
Bray said that the list of close contacts involves junior and senior high school students, a graduation party, as well as baseball, volleyball and basketball games.
“It is extremely wide spread,” Bray said, “Out of this cluster, we do believe we have additional cases. We have already had two cases come up positive that are related.”
Bray said one of the positive cases is believed to be related to a baseball game. The other is close contact with a teammate. She also said there is a lot of travel involved including tournaments and a vacation.
The ninth reported positive case is not related to the others. The person works out of town.
Bray said that the person did attend a church service asymptomatic. The pastor has been contacted, and members of the congregation are being contacted.
Possible close contacts from a baseball game involving the 10th confirmed case are being contacted.
The 11th case is directly related to the positive case from out of county.
Cloud County currently has six active cases, and those individuals are still in quarantine.
The sixth and seventh cases were related, and are believed to have originated in Salina.
The eighth case is a person who visited Texas, and family members in Texas became ill.
Bray is urging everyone to continue to be cautious, wear a mask when in public, practice social distancing and only congregate with people that you are normally around.
“Do not add people to the mix,” Bray said, “Hold your small Fourth of July celebration, but try to be cautious. Social distance yourself.”
Bray said that people are no longer being cautious when attending activities such as ball games.
“Back in March everyone was all gung-ho on 'We have to prevent this. We have to keep this shut down.
We have to mitigate the spread.' And the actual cases stayed really, really low, which was our goal. I feel like we accomplished our goal,” Bray said, “And now that it's the end of June, the fear of COVID is gone. No one is obeying social distancing. Which there are not any guidelines out there right now, or health orders as of today. The fear of COVID is really low, and now the cases are going to skyrocket.”
Bray said that she believes that the county has gotten to the point where a new health order will be discussed. She was going to meet with County Health Officer Dr. Dorothy Breault on Wednesday afternoon and said that if there can be some activities shut down without a health order it could help mitigate the spread of the virus.
“We really feel like we need to reduce our mass gatherings considerably. In order to do that, yes, we would have to put out a health order,” Bray said, “It really does concern me about putting out a health order because people are not listening. However, after we have had this case contact, this massive amount of case contacts, people may start to listen.”
Bray said it was obvious yesterday when case contacts started rolling in that she didn't have enough staff to organize and contact and disperse all of that information.
There are quarantine orders that need to be delivered to all of those individuals that are considered close contacts.
“I am not going to lie, it is a little overwhelming. My main staff here at the office has been amazing. They have taken some pretty nasty phone calls,” Bray said, “We cannot overwhelm our health care right now.”