WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – One year later and some medical professionals in Wichita say we are still learning about COVID-19. While we were not perfectly prepared, there is much optimism about how far we have come.
“We all acknowledge these things do not happen very often,” said Sedgwick County Health Officer Dr. Garold Minns.
“It has been a very, very long year not just for people in the medical profession, but people in the city,” said Dr. Tom Moore.
“It behaved differently than other pneumonias,” said Dr. Minns.
But Dr. Minns and Dr. Moore say we can still learn from the unknown.
“The national numbers are falling for reasons which are not quite clear but are likely to be attributable to vaccine rollout as well as adherence to mask precautions,” said Dr. Moore.
“I think our medical side has improved tremendously and as far as hope improved tremendously,” said Dr. Minns.
And they say we are still improving as not just a state but a nation. Sedgwick County is now at its lowest positive case rate since early this summer and hospitalizations are down to where ICU beds are not filled by COVID patients, giving people in the medical community a chance to reflect on how we have dealt with this pandemic for a year.
“Science has evolved very rapidly,” said Dr. Moore. “We can now make a vaccine against a virus in record time and deploy it in record time.”
“Every decade or so we have something on a smaller scale like this happen, and I think most of the time I do not think we feel like we should have been prepared as we should have been,” said Dr. Minns.
