Governor signs legislation for hospital staffing, deploys Kansas National Guard

TOPEKA — Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday praised the Legislature’s bipartisan support in passing a bill that relaxes worker qualifications for understaffed hospitals and long-term care facilities, but acknowledged it won’t solve all of their staffing problems.

The best way to help frontline employees in the fight against COVID-19, the governor said, is to get vaccinated and boosted.

“Those vaccines are safe, they are free, they’re effective, and they’re the easiest way, perhaps the only way, to protect ourselves and our loved ones,” Kelly said.

The governor signed House Bill 2477, which the Legislature passed on Thursday. The bill extends her executive orders, which expire at the end of the day Friday, through Jan. 20, 2023.

Hospitals have been overwhelmed with more COVID-19 patients than ever before since the start of January, and nearly every patient in intensive care units is unvaccinated. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment reported 29 deaths, 92 hospitalizations and 20,806 new infections from COVID-19 since Wednesday.

Kansas lags national averages with just 58.6% of the population fully vaccinated, including 69.8% of adults, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Just 41.2% of Kansas adults have received a booster shot.

The governor also announced she has deployed 80 soldiers and airmen from the Kansas National Guard to help KDHE at testing sites around the state, and with the shipment and delivery of personal protective equipment.

Kelly said she has engaged the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Veterans Health Administration to provide ICU beds for non-veterans to help reduce the strain on Kansas hospitals.

“We are at an inflection point with the omicron variant, and the strain on our hospitals is taking a toll on our health care workers and patients — all while the virus continues to spread rapidly through our communities,” Kelly said.

Officials attribute the surge in COVID-19 patients to the omicron variant, which is far more contagious than past strains of COVID-19. Hospitals have struggled to provide bed space for patients because of a shortage of nurses and sick employees.

Tim Williamson, physician and vice president of quality and safety at the University of Kansas Health System, said during an online briefing Friday that this surge in infections could peak within a few weeks. Hospitalizations typically trail infections by a couple of weeks, followed by rising death totals.

Already, Williamson said, the hospital morgue is at capacity with the highest number of deaths the KU Health System has recorded since the start of the pandemic.

“We are right at the edge of our capacity, any given day, to manage our patients down there,” Williamson said. “And when we exceed that capacity — we hope we don’t — but we would need to bring in additional refrigerator trucks.”

Jill Chadwick, a spokeswoman for KU Health, was on a tour of the hospital’s morgue. She said it was draining for the staff to grapple with the volume of patients.

Twenty-nine people have died of COVID-19 at the hospital so far in January, which is more than all of December.

Employees there “are saddened to see the word ‘covid’ written on body bags,” Chadwick said.

“The patients are patients even in death,” Chadwick said. “They have dignity. They are well taken care of.”

Amanda Cackler, director of infection prevention at KU Health, said the organization is shifting employees around to fill staffing shortages and meet patient needs. That means statisticians are helping with environmental services and vice presidents are transporting patients.

“We have just had, both on the clinical and nonclinical setting, everyone chipping in to support our normal operating functions,” Cackler said.