Customer service office reopens after city workers test positive
The city reopened its utility billing services office Thursday after three employees there tested positive for COVID-19 last week.
City Manager Bill Burrough said Thursday that about eight or nine employees returned to the office in the Bill Edwards Center at 517 Airport Road. They had been working from home, he said.
“We were able to spin up some laptops, cellphones and connect those to the system where they were still able to take calls out of the queue and still work from home while they were quarantined, those that were negative,” he told the
Hot Springs Board of Directors Tuesday night.
“I just want to commend all of them for the strict measures that they have taken to lower the chances of transmission in their offices. When you go out there everyone had gloves on, masks on, but these things still can happen. It’s one of the things that we’ve got to remain vigilant about.”
The workers who returned to the office tested negative during their quarantine period. Burrough said last week they last had contact with their infected co-workers July 27. He told the board Tuesday it’s unlikely water and sewer customers who came to the office prior to it closing were exposed.
“I’ve got some calls from some concerned citizens on whether they felt like there might have been an exposure there,” he said. “It doesn’t appear that that would happen. They were servicing everyone out of a window which had a partition, and they were wearing their masks and gloves. The chances of being exposed were little to none in that area.”
Burrough told the board one of the infected workers went to the hospital but was not admitted. Two of the three employees’ symptoms are significant, he said.
“They’re pretty sick, so our thoughts and prayers are with them,” he said. “We wish them a speedy recovery.”
Burrough said Thursday the city is considering having some of the office work from home to prevent another closure.
“We’ll still have people at our customer service location, but some of the work, especially phone work, we’ll try to do that off-site,” he said. “The last thing we want is to have this happen again and have to shut down our entire system.”