HOLYOKE — As COVID-19 cases and hospitalization rates slowly decline in Massachusetts, the state is close to entering the second phase of a four-part plan to open up the economy.
That reopening means more work for local health departments, which are already facing a backlog in typical inspections and will now be monitoring businesses’ compliance with state coronavirus guidelines.
“With the backlog this has created, we are going to have to have the inspectors we do have working overtime to catch up,” said Sean Gonsalves, the director of Holyoke’s Board of Health. “And covid inspections are a new landscape. That knowledge is going to have to be learned as it is updated and changed.”
In light of that additional work, Holyoke has opened job postings for one full-time and two part-time temporary COVID-19 compliance inspectors. And other health departments are also looking to boost staffing, which in normal times is often a problem for local health agents.
“Public health, in general, has always been short-staffed,” said Bri Eichstaedt, Easthampton’s health agent. “With this being added, it throws us more and more behind.”
Eichstaedt said that the amount of complaints the city has fielded in the past three months are up significantly from the same time period last year. Health departments are normally “severely underwater” with work, Eichstaedt said. In Easthampton, she said the health department has needed a part-time inspector for years.
Now, with grant money from the state Department of Public Health, Easthampton has hired a part-time, temporary inspector to help with the complaint load. And for the coming fiscal year, Eichstaedt has requested a permanent part-time inspector. She said the new hire wouldn’t completely plug the holes, but that it would be a start.
“We have needed this inspector for years,” Eichstaedt said.
In Holyoke, the city will be paying its three new inspectors with money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act — the federal legislation to address the health, economic and social fallout from the pandemic.
“These COVID inspectors are really here to let our base inspectors do their primary functions and duties,” Gonsalves said. Those regular inspectors will now be free to do food safety inspections, for example, while a COVID-19 inspector conducts a coronavirus safety inspection.
Gonsalves said that the new inspectors would be responding to employee complaints, for example, if they don’t feel that their employer is following state guidelines. For instance, he said, if a call center employee believes their employer has exceeded the requirement that buildings are only filled to 40% capacity, an inspector could look at the certificate of occupancy and decide if the business had broken the rules.
He said the work is about making sure institutions are not open when they shouldn’t be, or aren’t skirting state safety guidelines. Those kinds of inspections will be bringing the health board into spaces they don’t usually monitor — factories, for example.
“Our focus is really on education and providing information and making sure people are aware of the regulations,” Gonsalves said. “And a much lower focus on being punitive, issuing fines.”
The COVID-19 inspectors will be hired as long as the federal funding allows, he said. The inspectors will be dealing with residential and commercial properties, with an opportunity to earn up to $23.79 per hour.
“Our needs for them are throughout the phased reopening,” Gonsalves said.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.