Safeguarding People’s Health Bureau County Health Department continues fighting its way through a pandemic By Brandon LaChance
M
arch is here. There are St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, track meets, baseball and softball games to attend, and Easter plans to mark on the calendar. Then there is an anniversary no one wants to remember, think about, or talk about – Covid-19. The virus, now a pandemic, sent a shock wave of wonder, sickness, death, debate, and change to the entire world in March 2020. Fast forward to the present, and the pandemic is still affecting every part of the world, including Bureau County, where the Bureau County Health Department is doing what it’s done from Day 1 – protect everyone in its county lines to the best of its abilities. “For us, the biggest thing was the uncertainty when the pandemic started. Nobody knew exactly what this virus was or how it was going to affect people,” said BCHD Administrator Hector Gomez. “The media overworked the virus story. Then with the vaccines, there wasn’t enough of them produced at first. There weren’t enough supplies for the medical field of things that were needed to take care of people. There
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was a lot of panic. “I think we adjusted well. We took a lot of comments about things that we don’t have control over. If the governor said, ‘We are getting this and that, and you’re going to be able to do this,’ most of that is for Chicago and the bigger cities. A small or rural health department like ours, we didn’t get everything he was talking about when he was talking about it. We had to wait.” Gomez, who has been with the department for 16 years and has served as administrator since 2019, gave credit to his staff and all medical field professionals for how they’ve dealt with Covid. With Gomez’s help, the BCHD was proactive and acted fast to serve the Bureau, Putnam, and Marshall county communities. “We put measures in place really fast to help our staff. We let some work from home. We closed off some services because we do a lot with babies and the WIC program and the elderly,” Gomez said. “The health See HEALTH page 6
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