While no cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in the county, it’s never too soon to start preparing, Clark County Commissioner Melanie Flax Wilt said.
“We’re making proactive, common-sense plans to be able to serve the public in the case of an epidemic,” Flax Wilt said. “As far as we’re concerned, it’s business as usual with practical healthy precautions.”
All county departments have operations plans that allow them to continue to serve the public in case of an emergency, a statement from the county said.
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Examples of operational plans include: creating separate work locations for essential personnel to prevent the possible spread of a virus among staff members, encouraging employees who may be sick to go home, permitting any non-essential personnel to work from home based on their job duties, reducing large group meetings and replacing necessary non-public meetings with video and phone conferencing.
Clark County spokesperson Michael Cooper said the county will ensure that water and sewer service are not interrupted, law enforcement and child protective services remain in place and court systems continue to run efficiently.
County residents who need to visit the Bushnell Building are welcome too, Cooper said, but all county business besides deed purchasing can be done online.
“County departments will also be performing extra cleaning to mitigate the spread of illness,” Cooper said.
The Ohio Masonic Home will also be taking extra steps to keep their facilities clean, according to a statement from the retirement community.
All events for residents on the Masonic Home’s Springfield campus were canceled off Wednesday night, the statement said.
On Thursday afternoon, Gov. Mike DeWine announced he would be issuing a public order to ban all visitors to nursing homes.
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Prior to the announcement, the Masonic Home was still allowing residents to see family members “if they are symptom-free, have not traveled internationally in the last 14 days to countries with sustained community transmission, have not had contact with someone who has a confirmed case of COVID-19, or currently resides in a community where community-based spread of COVID-19 is occurring,” a statement from the Masonic Home said.
“The Ohio Masonic Home and all of its subsidiaries value our community members, their families, and our employees’ safety and well-being,” the statement said. “We will continue to actively communicate with our employees and our community members as we receive additional information.”
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