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The Oktibbeha supervisors unanimously passed a 30-day curfew at Monday's board meeting in response to the continued spread of COVID-19 coronavirus.

The curfew will be effective immediately and lasts from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., with the exception of essential travel.

Board President and District 1 Supervisor John Montgomery suggested the curfew in addition to Gov. Tate Reeves' 17-day "shelter-in-place" order that went into effect Friday at 5 p.m. Montgomery said he received a call from a constituent on Friday who wanted to socialize anyway, and a curfew "gives the sheriff's department a little more teeth."

Sheriff Steve Gladney said the department had to deal with an influx of visitors from Clay and Lowndes counties for two weekends in March.

"We ran them off in several different places (and) we broke up several parties at the apartment complexes," Gladney said. "This weekend we didn't have that problem, but that was the problem we were having because the other two counties had a curfew and we didn't."

Montgomery, District 2 Supervisor Orlando Trainer and District 5 Supervisor Joe Williams voted for the curfew. Supervisors Marvell Howard of District 3 and Bricklee Miller of District 4 both left the meeting early.

Earlier in the meeting, the board voted unanimously to require all county departments to send the board a list of measures they are taking to prevent their employees from contracting and spreading the virus and to notify the board when an employee has been tested. The board will have the ability to modify and approve the lists of measures.

Both votes came after a debate over whether county employees who have possibly been exposed to the coronavirus should still come to work if they have not experienced symptoms. The discussion started when road manager Fred Hal Baggett told the board that one of his employees tested positive for the virus.

The employee received his test results on Saturday and had not worked since March 30, when he did not show symptoms at work but felt sick afterward, Baggett said. The road department employees had been practicing social distancing, including limiting its trucks to one occupant each, wearing gloves and using hand wipes, but did not have hand sanitizer available, he said.

Miller asked if the department needed to use a "skeleton crew" to work on county roads in order to limit interpersonal contact even if that means fewer projects are finished.

"I think citizens are more concerned about the health and welfare of people in the community and would be understanding if a pothole did not get patched right now," Miller said. "I don't think spraying mosquitoes or hauling gravel on Saturday are a necessity right now."

Baggett said the board has to authorize the use of a skeleton crew, and County Administrator Emily Garrard said some departments might as well shut down. Howard said shutting down departments was unrealistic but each one needs to have protective measures in place, especially since someone can spread the virus without showing symptoms themselves.

"This thing is still fluid, it's ever-changing and you sort of have to learn to make decisions on the fly," Howard said.

Howard said protective measures should be up to individual department heads, but Garrard and board attorney Rob Roberson both said they would prefer that the board make a decision that applies to all departments.

Operational changes at OCH

As of Monday morning, there were 85 confirmed cases in the OCH Regional Medical Center's seven-county service area with 27 in Oktibbeha County. Less than 30 percent of those patients require hospitalization, OCH Disaster Preparedness Officer Wes Andrews said.

Andrews, OCH CEO Jim Jackson and Chief Medical Officer Todd Smith gave the supervisors a report on the hospital's state of operations as the pandemic continues to escalate. An 89-year-old woman died of the virus at OCH on Sunday, becoming Oktibbeha County's first COVID-19 fatality.

The hospital has revised its visitation policy, canceled clinic appointments and eliminated elective surgeries, meaning that "anything that generates revenue, we've been told to stop," Jackson said. Surgeons are being trained to provide bedside care in the absence of surgeries, he said.

Those who have been exposed to the virus but do not show symptoms should wear a mask to keep from spreading it through secretion, and it would be reasonable to assume everyone has it in order to take adequate precautions, Smith said.

OCH has been a point of distribution for personal protective equipment for other medical facilities and will soon get its own PPE from the Mississippi State Department of Health, Andrews said.

"We've watched as those facilities have come and picked up PPE from our loading docks, we've sorted it for them and we've staged it for them, we've loaded it onto their trucks when they've come," he said. "Day after day we've seen those trucks come, and none of those were set aside for OCH until now."

The county Emergency Management Agency is setting up a hotline to answer questions about COVID-19, and the board unanimously approved a contract with C Spire to create the hotline.