Since January 2020, we have been actively responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Direct local public health actions combined with our strong relationships and work with health care partners, municipalities, partner organizations, businesses, and our community members continue to show the collective efforts we have made to protect everyone in Simcoe Muskoka from COVID-19.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in some changes to the way many businesses, organizations and agencies deliver their services or run their business. For public health, in particular this has contributed to the following actions over the course of the pandemic:
We have:
- Redeployed over half of all staff members to COVID-19 work.
- Focused on critical services to meet urgent and time-sensitive needs.
- Adopted active screening, virtual programming, masking and physical distancing processes for all our staff.
- Provided technology enhancements that allow most of our staff to work from home to prevent any transmission of COVID-19 in the workplace.
These changes allow us to deliver essential services in new ways that reduce the risk of spreading the virus. They permit us to concentrate on the critical public health response to COVID-19 while keeping our community safe. Being flexible and able to adapt our services and work to fit the current situation is critical to our success in helping bring this pandemic to an end.
Staff redeployment
Since January 2020, our entire staff has worked in some capacity or another to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and/or continue to deliver essential public health services across Simcoe Muskoka. More than half our staff has been redeployed from their regular work to COVID-specific work, including public health nurses, registered practical nurses, public health inspectors, dietitians, nutritionists, dental hygienists, health promoters and administration staff. Redeployed staff are dedicated to COVID-related work such as contact tracing and case investigation, COVID-19 vaccine administration and immunization program, and customer service support on our COVID-19 response line.
Page last updated: December 31, 2020