In response to the COVID-19 Coronavirus – particularly the one presumptive case in Forrest County – officials from the City of Petal are taking steps to prevent the spread of the virus, including temporarily closing the Petal Senior Center and increasing safety measures for firefighters responding to emergency situations.
Mayor Hal Marx said because of the risk the virus poses to elderly residents, as well as the possibility of the spread of the virus at large gatherings, the senior center will be shut down for the next week.
“Then we’ll see where we are at the end of next week,” he said. “If things have progressed and we have more cases, then of course we’ll keep it probably shut down.
“If we don’t have any new cases in Forrest County by that time, and it looks like we’re kind of dodging the bullet, we may go ahead and reopen it. But I think right now it’s just a precaution to do that.”
City officials also are in the process of securing additional personal protective equipment for Petal Fire Department, including gloves and masks, to help protect emergency responders from the possible spread of the virus. In the meantime, the fire department may limit its responses to certain situations.
“We’re kind of low on that (equipment) right now, and until we have that, the fire department is going to limit the medical calls they go on,” Marx said. "They’ll still go on calls where there’s chest pains, possible heart attacks, strokes or different things like that.
“But if somebody calls and complains about feeling bad or having a fever, flu-like symptoms, we’re going to advise them to go on to the hospital and be checked, or to call AAA Ambulance. We don’t have the gear right now to protect our firefighters from possibly having a contagious virus transmitted to them in that situation. Of course, as soon as we get more of that protective gear available, we’ll be able to go back to those types of calls.”
In addition, officials will carefully evaluate if and where city employees are sent out of state for measures such as professional training classes.
“I might decide that it’s prudent not to send our employees off to certain areas of the country who were going to go to any kind of training or schools, anything like that,” Marx said. “I don’t think we have any people scheduled to go to those places, but there are some places in the country that are a little higher-risk because they’ve had more cases, so we’ll just evaluate that as we go along and see where we’re at.”
Marx said medical professionals have advised school officials that there is no need to shut down any schools in the district.
“One of the things that I was very glad to hear is that children are not at very high risk for this – they don’t know why, but children don’t seem to get the virus like adults do. There’s a very low percentage of kids that get it, so they’re not suggesting that we close the schools or anything like that right now.
“We’re very hopeful that this is probably overly cautious, and we hope that we don’t have any more cases in Forrest County,” he said. “But sometimes it’s better to err on the side of caution, so that’s what we’re trying to do.”
