Dr. Beth Oller would like Kansas to remain under a stay-at-home order a while longer, even as some neighbors in her rural northwest county are restless to see businesses return to normal. Oller and her husband are family physicians in their late 30s in Stockton, a town of 1,300 people roughly halfway between Kansas City to the east and Denver to the west. They watched as the coronavirus pandemic crept ever closer from those two metropolitan areas, each some 300 miles away. The first positive case in Rooks County was one of Oller’s patients, confirmed on Palm Sunday, April 5. A few days after Easter, the doctor’s husband displayed mild symptoms. He later tested negative. Now, as Gov. Laura Kelly prepares to start reopening Kansas businesses next week, Oller worries that the restrictions are being abandoned too soon, with potentially deadly consequences. Meanwhile, neighbors worry that tight restrictions in a rural county with few coronavirus cases will kill their livelihoods.
(Read more: KSN-TV)
