Letter: Health officials should be in charge of coronavirus response

Published 11:00 am Tuesday, March 10, 2020

To the Editor:

I understand that the Grant County Court recently appointed a deputy sheriff to be the incident commander of a new task force to address the new coronavirus. Every IC I have worked with had a vast amount of experience dealing with the program they have been assigned to. How does search and rescue experience qualify one to be an IC? Why is our county health department not in charge? What is the purpose of our county Office of Emergency Management? I would feel a lot more comfortable having someone with health experience dealing with the on going COVID-19 outbreak. If we have an outbreak in Grant County, I would hope we would make use of the health professionals and our emergency management coordinator that Grant County already has in place, instead of a deputy sheriff experienced only in search and rescue. Come on, Grant County, you deserve better.

Chris Labhart

John Day