Christian Fiscal Court met under unusual circumstances Tuesday morning and heard an update on the local response to COVID-19.
Emergency Management Director Randy Graham noted that Tennessee has significantly higher numbers of patients than Kentucky and counties along the southern border are seeing evidence of that with an uptick in cases in recent days.
Personal protective equipment such as face masks is hard to come by for medical providers and first responders across the country and Graham says medical offices not involved in the coronavirus response and area businesses have stepped up to help locally.
He says Christian County officials have been communicating often with personnel in adjoining counties and on Fort Campbell. Fiscal Court approved temporarily increasing the monthly hours for Deputy Emergency Management Cecelia Cloos from 40 to 96.
Jailer Brad Boyd says it’s possible Christian County could soon be the home to a regional intake jail where all new inmates arrested in Christian and adjoining Kentucky counties would be housed in the Restricted Custody Center—which is the old jail on Weber Street—for a quarantine period of 14 days before entering their home jail.
The decision on whether to open a regional intake jail and where to locate it will be made by the Justice Cabinet.
Judge-Executive Steve Tribble praised all local departments and agencies for working together in the response and noted it’s unlike anything the county has ever faced in many decades.
Magistrates moved their seats to maintain as much distance between each other as possible and Deputy Emergency Management Director Lucas Stagner took the temperature of each person who entered the courthouse door to be sure no one had a fever higher than 99.5 degrees.