By Teri Knight, News Director
As reported 2 weeks ago, Post Consumer Brands Director of Communications, Katie Seifert, confirmed that they have a third party medical staff doing wellness checks before workers start their shift at all of their plants. In spite of efforts made, such as staggering shifts, additional cleaning and adhering to social distancing, they report 5 cases of Covid-19. There are more than 600 employees at the Northfield plant. Other plants with positive cases include Daikin Applied in Owatonna and Faribault Foods in Faribault. With wider ability to test for the coronavirus, there’s an increase in positives.
Purfeerst says MDH pleased with measures taken, but virus hard to contain
Rice County Public Health Director, Deb Purfeerst was on the Morning Show and discussed the numbers in Rice County as well as the spike in cases related to workplaces. She said many of those businesses have been very transparent, “we’ve been on calls with the Dept. of Health, the Dept. of Ag representatives with some of those businesses and really MDH staff has been very impressed with the workplace measures that the businesses in Rice County have in place”. Purfeerst said this is an interesting virus, “data suggests that there is a high rate of infection in asymptomatic
people so it’s hard to contain spread when you have asymptomatic people”. As for testing availability in Rice County, she said residents do have options including Allina Health in Faribault, Mayo clinic in Owatonna, which is open 7 days a week (both have drive-through), and Northfield Hospital. HealthFinders in Faribault has also started testing, in particular those without insurance. We’ll hear more from HealthFinders themselves. Rice County is in good shape for testing capacity compared to the rest of the state. One thing local public health does not receive is information on how many tests have been done, “so that’s a limitation to the data I have, I don’t know how many tests have been completed. You can see that on the State Dept. of Health website”. That is for the State total. It’s not broken up by community either. If you’re interested in getting tested, it’s best to call first. As for those without insurance, people are not turned away. There’s more to Purfeerst’s interview HERE.
Council ponders Community Pool opening
Will the community pool at Memorial Park in Northfield open for the Summer? Facilities Manager Jayson Dwelle and his team put a lot of thought and preparation into scenarios and presented 3 options to Council this week. Should they be allowed to open, he said they would break the day into two hour sessions, three times a day. There would be a limited number allowed for each session, they would sanitize after each session and the deck chairs would be removed. Users would have to bring their own chairs, blankets, towels, whathaveyou. Spots would be marked out for social distancing and signage used to explain the rules as well as assumptions of risks for patrons. They would sanitize between each session. The pool water itself is safe as they properly treat it anyway. Other options include shutting it down for the season, Dwelle’s recommendation, “to close the pool. Then we would take the summer to catch up on repairs and deferred maintenance to the pool area and the pavilion and the pool basin itself”. The council chose to wait until their June 2nd meeting to make any decision.
“Dundas Square”? You bet
Dundas beat Northfield. In a quest for the highest response rate for filling out the 2020 Census, Dundas won with 78.7% to Northfield’s 77.0%. The agreement between Mayors Switzer and Pownell means that Bridge Square will be renamed Dundas Square for a month. If you haven’t filled out your Census yet there’s still time. The 2020 Census will determine congressional representation, inform hundreds of billions in federal funding every year, and provide data that will impact communities for the next decade.
NHS virtual Road Home
Each year, to end their Spring Concert, the Northfield High School choirs and alumni sing, The Road Home, to honor the seniors performing in their last high school concert. This year the concert was cancelled due to Covid-19. Instead they performed a virtual version. Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann shared it with us and we have posted it to our Community News page HERE.
