Around New England

Public Buildings May Get Permanent Barriers To Protect City Workers From Contagion in Worcester

May 12, 2020

People visiting offices at city hall in Worcester might be greeted by permanent physical barriers between them and employees sometime in the future, a city official said.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker yesterday laid out in broad, vague terms what reopening public life in various phases in the age of coronavirus might look like. Local officials are also looking at changes – some permanent – that they might be making.

Worcester’s city manager, Edward M. Augustus Jr., addressed the proposed phased reopening during a coronavirus press conference on Monday, May 11.

“We’ve been working pretty diligently … at the city level … to figure out from a city-department operational point of view what we need to be planning for as we move in those different phases — in terms of how we set up protocols for employees coming back as city buildings open back up to the general public. What protocols do we have in place? Are we looking to put Plexiglass and other things at locations where we have high-frequency interactions between citizens and city workers? So we’re exploring all of those types of things, trying to cost those out, figure out how long it would take to do those,” Augustus said.

(The comments come at 19:17 of the video on the city’s web site.)