COVID-19: Honesty with Responders is Paramount
December 1, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE….
We want to take this time to let our citizens know that Gordon County, Calhoun, leadership and public safety from all municipalities continue to work alongside each other to address issues relevant to COVID-19 within our community by communicating daily and holding bi-weekly meetings. These bi-weekly meetings serve as a tool to make sure we are all collaborating together to stay up to date on our current situation as well as that around our nation. We also monitor numbers daily to include increases of cases and deaths both statewide and in Gordon County as well as numbers from our local hospitals on COVID-19 cases, bed availability and ventilator availability.
We as the task force want to assure our citizens our public safety is ready to respond at any given moment to your emergency when they are needed no matter what the emergency is. All calls to E9-1-1 are screened with questions to assess if the caller or anyone in the residence potentially has COVID or has been exposed to COVID. It has been noticed over the last couple of weeks that callers to the E9-1-1 center requesting assistance may not be fully answering the questions related to COVID-19 symptoms and exposures for the fear that “nobody will come and help them if they think they have COVID.” Please know this would never happen. However, also know that it is very important to answer all questions fully and honestly so that we can protect our first responders. These questions are not to assess if anyone will be sent to help. They are used to let the responders know what situation they are going in to so they can wear the proper equipment and take the proper precautions.
We will continue to monitor situations daily and do all that we can to keep our citizens safe. Since the beginning of this pandemic we have worked diligently to try and stay ahead of this virus as a team here in Gordon County. We ask that our citizens continue to do the things that can be done during this time to help our community as a whole. If you do feel you need to be tested the Gordon County Health Department continues testing at the Gordon County Senior Center which is currently closed to normal operations. The Senior Center is located at 150 Cambridge Court in Calhoun and free testing will be conducted on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 8:30-4:30. No appointment is needed for this testing.
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