photo by: Nick Krug

Lawrence City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., is pictured on May 3, 2016.

As the employer of hundreds of essential employees still physically reporting to work, the City of Lawrence may be able to provide an example to employers contemplating how to bring employees back to work safely once stay-at-home orders lift.

For the city, precautions include daily temperature checks, staggered shifts and face masks in circumstances when job responsibilities don’t allow employees to maintain a 6-foot distance. City spokesman Porter Arneill said in an email to the Journal-World that the city began taking employees’ temperatures daily the week of April 12 to minimize potential exposure to COVID-19 for the city’s essential staff.

“Temperature-taking before and after employees report to work on-site is intended to provide additional safeguards, along with face covers, for essential employees to help minimize the possibility of exposure to the novel coronavirus,” Arneill said.

There are currently about 575 city employees who report to work on-site, including City Hall, parks and recreation, planning and development and transit employees, as well as police, Municipal Court and fire and medical workers, according to information the city provided to the Journal-World. Arneill said the number of on-site employees varies daily or weekly because in some cases staff has implemented staggered schedules between work and home.

In addition to face coverings and daily temperature checks, Arneill said city staff is disinfecting and cleaning surfaces, equipment and vehicles to further minimize the spread of the coronavirus. And should an employee have a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit or above, they are sent home. Arneill said the city’s risk management division is then contacted to begin assessing symptoms to determine if the employee should be tested for COVID-19 and to ascertain if other employees might have been exposed.

So far, the city and local health officials have not reported instances of the virus being transmitted among city workers. Arneill said that no other city employees have tested positive for COVID-19 since a police officer tested positive last month. The city and unions that represent police and fire and medical staff also say that the city currently has an adequate stock of masks, gloves and other protective gear, as the Journal-World recently reported.

The city employs more than 800 people, meaning that when stay-at-home orders lift the city could have to deal with more than 200 employees transitioning from working remotely to working on-site. Arneill said the community’s Unified Command system put in place to deal with the virus — which consists of the city, Douglas County, LMH Health and Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health — is in the process of forming a task force to work on a plan for when the stay-at-home order is lifted.

As of Friday morning, only 46 Douglas County residents had tested positive for the virus. However, Kansas has had one of the lowest testing rates of any state so far — 7.32 per 1,000 residents as of Thursday — and the state has been working to increase its testing capacity. Several nearby counties have reported hundreds of cases, and there have been 2,777 cases statewide as of Friday morning, according to figures from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and state officials are working on a plan to gradually reopen the economy once the statewide stay-at-home order is lifted, though moving forward will require robust testing and a focus on several other metrics, the Journal-World has reported. Currently, the statewide stay-at-home order is scheduled to be in place until May 3, but Kelly said Thursday that the state was “nowhere near” where it needed to be in terms of testing capacity and getting necessary supplies.