KINGWOOD — Preston County Commissioners allocated $63,300 of the governor’s “hero pay” block grant Tuesday.
The purchases will include $30,000 for hand sanitizer and personal protective equipment (PPE), $22,000 for four transport ventilators with supplies, $5,200 to buy each of the 12 volunteer fire departments a sanitizing kit for their equipment and $5,100 for a storage unit at the county emergency management/911 office to hold the supplies.
The PPE and hand sanitizer will be available to all first responders and to town and public service district employees, including trash collectors and water plant workers.
The ventilators were selected after talking with three vendors and the respiratory therapist at Mon Health Preston Memorial, where the units will be housed, County Administrator Kathy Mace said.
Mace said they aren’t sure yet what kind of sanitizing items EMS may need for its equipment.
The county health department is also spending $10,000 on PPE, which will be added to the stockpile. The hope is that will be enough to allow the county to help clinics that may run low, Mace said.
County Emergency Management/911 Director Duane Hamilton said it will probably take three months to fill the order, because many items come from overseas. “When the second wave comes, we want to be prepared,” he said of a possible second outbreak of COVID-19.
As of Tuesday, Preston County had 13 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Commission President Samantha Stone said when considering purchases it was important to ask, “If we had been hit very hard [by COVID-19] what would we have been lacking in this county?”
The $100,000 grants went to each county in the state with instructions they be used to cover “extraordinary costs that your county and the municipalities within your county are incurring for the first responders and true soldiers right on the front lines of this pandemic.” That’s for the period of March 1 to Dec. 30.
That limits how the money can be spent, Commissioner Don Smith said.
In other COVID-19 related discussions, Mace said Plexiglas barriers are being installed on the counters of county offices and ways to route people in and out of buildings while maintaining good social distancing are being developed.
Commissioners also voted unanimously to extend the COVID-19 state of emergency up to 60 days. The declaration, made March 18, was initially for 30 days and restricted walk-in traffic in county offices.
On May 5, the commission will resume its normal meeting time of 5:30 p.m. the first Tuesday of the month and 9 a.m. each Tuesday. Meetings are live streamed on its Facebook page.
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