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Tuesday, July 7, 2020
REPUBLICAN-TIMES TRENTON
Trenton, MO 64683
75¢
per copy Check out the Republican-Times on the Internet: www.republican-times.com ©W.B. Rogers Printing Co., Inc.
Twelve Pages
Established Sept. 4, 1864 - 156th Year - No. 87
R-T Photos/Diane Lowrey
Local residents celebrated the Independence Day holiday with activities that continued throughout the weekend. On Friday night, a large crowd viewed the annual Trenton community fireworks display (pictured at left) held at the Black Silo Winery. Riverside Country Club held its traditional Fourth of July parade on Saturday, featuring both youth and adults traveling the neighborhood route in holiday-decorated bicycles and golf carts (pictured above). The Grundy County Museum also opened over the weekend for the 2020 season with “Photography Now and Then” as its featured exhibit.
JEWETT NORRIS LIBRARY
Briefs...
Monday Through Friday
Local Library Is Open For Business The Grundy County-Jewett Norris Library is reminding patrons the facility remains open for those wanting to use the library’s services. The library is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday through Friday. For those who choose to go into the library to use its services, entry is through the north door only, with patrons using the stairway as the elevator cannot be used due to mechanical issues. Non-contact forehead temperatures are taken before entry into the main library is allowed and all persons are required to wear a mask over the nose and mouth areas. Children age two to 10 must be accompanied by an adult (age 18 and over). No children under the age of two will be allowed inside. Once inside, patrons are given 20 minutes to complete their business. Computers on the second floor are available for essential use by adults only (to guarantee computer space, call the library). The children’s computer lab is open with social distancing guidelines to be observed. Only five patrons are allowed at a time in both the children and adult library areas.
COVID-19
COLLEGE AID 2020-21 Applications
Meet The e Candid date
Books can be checked out in person during the library’s regular hours and persons with a library card can also reserve books via the library website, www.grundycountylibrary.org. Those who do not want to come into the library or who are ill can use the facility’s curbside service. The library has added several new books to its collection. The list includes: “Texas Outlaw” by James Patterson, “Camino Winds” by John Grisham, “Journey of the Pharoah” by Clive Cussler, “Hit List” by Stuart Woods, “The Goodbye Man” by Jeffry Deaver, “Walk the Wire” by David Baldacci, “The Lincoln Conspiracy” by Brad Meltzer, “Jadite” by Joe Keller and David Ross, “The Room Where it Happened” by John Bolton, the Dawn Brooke Series (“Killer Cruise”, “Deadly Cruise” and “A Cruise to Murder”) and the Julia David series (“Love Covers”, “Love Flies” and “Love Protects”). For additional information, persons can contact the library at 660-359-3577.
Fewer Students Seeking Help
The Grundy County Republican Central Committee will be hosting a “Meet the Candidate” Night featuring GOP candidates on Monday, July 20. The event, which is open to the public, will be held at the First Assembly of God Church Family Activity Center. A dessert bar and refreshments will be served at 6:30 p.m., with candidates to begin speaking at 7 p.m. Both local and state Republican candidates have been invited to participate in the event.
C OVID-19 Upd date There are four active cases of COVID-19 in Grundy County, according to information provided by the local health department. As of Monday, Grundy County has recorded a total of 20 positive cases. Other area county totals include Sullivan, 115 (eight active); Livingston, 22; Harrison, 20 (seven active); Linn, 20 (three active); Carroll, 19 (eight active); Caldwell, 14; Daviess, 9 (four active); Mercer, 6; and Putnam, 3. Not all counties list their active cases. Wright Memorial Hospital and Hedrick Medical Center continue drive-through testing at the Green Hills Medical Clinic in Trenton and a site at the former Washington Street Food and Drink in Chillicothe. As of Monday, a total of 2,006 persons have been tested, including 592 by WMH and 1,414 by HMC. WMH numbers include 405 from Grundy County, 102 from Mercer County and 85 from other counties. HMC numbers include 202 from Grundy County, 42 from Mercer County 835 from Livingston County and 335 from other counties.
No Direction, Funding
Grappling With Contact Tracing Issues Colleen Wouters Missouri Information Corps Nearly four months into the COVID19 pandemic, city and county health departments in Missouri are working to expand contact tracing plans. But some say they’re still getting no direction or direct funding from the state. Gov. Mike Parson has declared that increased testing will help Missouri’s economy recover. But without statewide plans for contact tracing, some counties wonder if they’ll be able to keep up with monitoring cases over the next few months. The state “will be” using federal funds to develop an approach to contact tracing, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Senior Services. She said no funds have been spent yet. Local counties can also use federal CARES Act money to fund their contact tracing efforts, she said. Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, said in early June that the state was working on a contact tracing plan.
Missouri’s contact tracing efforts Contact tracing is a labor-intensive tool used by public health departments to prevent the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19. It requires workers to interview people who test positive, track down people they may have had contact with and ask them to self-quarantine. As stay-at-home orders are lifted, contact tracing gets harder. Missouri’s statewide stay-at-home order ended in early May. Now, anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 will likely have significantly more contacts. This means health departments are going from contacting two or three additional people per case to many more, said Stephanie Browning, the public health director for Columbia and Boone County. The amount of contacts can vary, Browning said. Some cases can have none and others can have as many as 50. Browning has been told throughout the past few months that the state was going to give health departments assis-
National Weather Service
Warm temperatures are expected early this week with highs in the 90s and heat index readings in the upper 90s. Lows will be in the low 70s. Rain is expected on Thursday. The high at Trenton on Thursday and Friday was 90 with Saturday’s high hitting 88 and .09 of an inch of rain. Sunday’s high was 92 with a low of 71. There was no report from the Government Weather Station near Spickard.
tance for contact tracing. She was told the state would either offer funding to hire new workers or hire a team of people at the state level that could assist in areas with fewer case investigators. “We were told that help was coming,” Browning said. Meanwhile, Missouri has recently seen its highest single-day increases in cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Over the past few weeks, a high number of new cases has been reported in southwest Missouri, and the state is using a “box-in” strategy to curb the outbreak in McDonald, Jasper, Newton and Barry Counties, according to a news release from the Department of Health and Senior Services. The state is providing contact tracing support for the public health agencies in those counties, according to the release. The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials estimates that to reopen communities at least 100,000 contact tracers nation-
wide are needed to rapidly identify, contain, support and re-test individuals who are infected or have been exposed. Missouri, with a population of just over six million, needs 1,870 contact tracers to have enough staff to contain the virus, according to their estimates. It is unclear how many people are currently working as contact tracers in Missouri. But multiple public health departments said they’ve shifted staff previously in other positions to contact tracing roles. ‘We worked seven days a week’ Saline County, with an estimated population of just over 22,700, saw a large spike in cases in late April and early May, making it a hotspot in Missouri compared to surrounding counties. At the time, the county had one of the highest per capita rates of cases in Missouri. The county’s public health department reported 292 confirmed cases and four deaths as of July 1. The Saline County Health Department had three nurses on staff who See COVID-19, Page 4
What’s Inside... Practices for the first 2020-21 sports-specific activities at Trenton High School got under way on Monday with the winter sports teams (basketball and wrestling) at work. See page 2 of today’s Republican-Times for a story and photos.
Trenton Republican-Times “News Every Day...When YOU Want It”
STEAMY
www.republican-times.com
By The Associated Press The number of high school seniors applying for U.S. federal college aid plunged in the weeks following the sudden closure of school buildings this spring — a time when students were cut off from school counselors, and families hit with financial setbacks were reconsidering plans for higher education. In the first weeks of the pandemic, the number of new applications fell by nearly half compared to last year’s levels, fueled by a precipitous decline among students at low-income schools, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data. The numbers have risen as states and schools have launched campaigns urging students to apply for aid, but they remain down overall from last year. It’s raising alarms among education officials who say thousands of students may be opting to delay or forgo college, with potentially dire consequences for their job prospects and future earnings. "The consequences are that kids are going directly into the workforce. They’re closing the door on post-high school learning,” said David Nieslanik, principal of Southridge High School in Beaverton, Oregon, where he saw only more affluent students file for aid once instruction moved online. The FAFSA, short for Free Application for Federal Student Aid, is required for students to be eligible for federal Pell grants and student loans. It’s also often a requirement for state aid. Students who complete the form are far more likely to enroll in college, studies have found, and those who receive aid are See College, Page 4
What’s Inside
Sports.............................page 2 Local News.............page 3 & 4 Community ...................page 5 Calendars ......................page 5 Across Missouri.....page 6 & 7 Church Page .................Page 8 Comics ...........................page 9 Dear Annie ..................page 10 Crosswords..................page 10