Editor's note: Find Firehouse.com's complete coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic here.
With local first responders among those to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the coming weeks, Bartlesville agencies are continuing hyper-vigilant cleaning and protection measures.
The Washington County Health Department alerts local dispatchers to addresses of confirmed-positive COVID-19 cases, and dispatchers ask callers screening questions in case of an unconfirmed diagnosis, so they have been able to alert Bartlesville police, firefighters and paramedics, but responders remain particularly high-risk.
Since the start of the pandemic, staffing has been impacted at various times for the Bartlesville Ambulance Service and Bartlesville Fire Department as employees have been diagnosed or exposed to COVID-19.
Ambulance Service Administrator Dan Dalton said necessary safety precautions have added a few minutes to ambulance response time, and six paramedics have contracted COVID-19.
Ambulances are disinfected after each call, with a fogger used for more thorough cleaning.
The fire department has been careful to decontaminate fire trucks, socially distance and wear masks in the station and, when possible, sends a single person inside a scene to assess it before bringing the rest of a team inside, said Bill Hollander, the BFD public information officer.
Bartlesville Police Department Patrol Capt. Kevin Ickleberry said officers are doing their best to wear masks and socially distance at the station and on calls. When possible, on non-life threatening calls, officers are encouraged to speak to local residents outdoors.
Ickleberry said a handful of officers have contracted or been exposed to the virus.
"Typically, the exposures we have had have been very minor. We've had just a handful of calls to COVID-positive residents. Most of the time those are more medical calls. We may go if someone's out of control or there's some other crime going on."
"If we do a welfare check on a citizen and they believe there's a possibility of COVID, we make make the initially entry, but we'll let the EMS go in first."
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