WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – Continued issues with the Kansas Department of Labor and questions about when more of the state’s population can get a COVID-19 vaccine are tops among Kansas talking points concerning the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Thursday, Eyewitness took questions we’ve heard from many and brought them to Kansas Governor Laura Kelly. Regarding vaccines, the state at this point has vaccinated about 200,000 Kansans, but CDC data ranks the state 47th in the country for distribution. The total vaccinated in Kansas comes out to about 6 percent of the state’s population.
We asked Governor Kelly why Kansas was ranked so low. Kelly said the data could be wrong, or there could be some delivery problems. She said the state will receive another shipment of 80,000 doses next week, the largest shipment the state’s had so far.
“I honestly don’t think it’s as grim as 47th sounds,” Kelly said of the CDC’s ranking for Kansas in vaccine distribution. “I’m in close communications with the KDHE, (and) Department of Emergency Management, and I know we set up a pretty sophisticated system for distribution early on,” Kelly said. “I’m not convinced the numbers are good. It’s not that I don’t care about our ranking, but my first and foremost concern is actually getting the shot into people’s arms.”
Issues with the Kansas Department of Labor go back to last March when the department experienced a spike in unemployment claims. In the last week, the state added more security features to the KDOL website, but unemployed Kansans report still having problems with trying to access their claims.
Eyewitness News asked Governor Kelly if unemployed Kansans will miss out on another week of payments.
“I hope not,” she said. “From what I know, we did shut down, but we had to because we had that whole security breach going on and we needed to do the work to make the system secure.”
She said the state is doing what it can to better the situation with KDOL.
“I know it’s bad. I’m not going to pretend it’s not, but we are doing everything we possibly can to make it better,” Kelly said. “When individuals have these issues, I can just suggest they keep trying, perhaps call their legislator, let the legislator come in and provide some constituent services for them and you know, maybe we can work around the system to get to their issue.”
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