Massachusetts remains one of the hardest hit states in America from the coronavirus pandemic, complicating decisions about a potential reopening of businesses.
Jon Mitchell, mayor of New Bedford, joined Boston Public Radio to outline what steps the industrial city has taken to ensure safety in a new normal.
"We've taken pains to over-communicate what we're doing," he said. "What I try to do is use more of a carrot than a stick, we've faithfully enforced social distancing and a number of workplace orders, as well as to promote social distancing in workplaces, but most of the messaging is around encouragement. People are doing a good job here, and I tell them that repeatedly."
Mitchell said the city of about 100,000 people has seen 45 deaths due to COVID-19 thusfar. Compared to other cities in the Northeast, Mitchell said New Bedford is faring well. They enacted social distancing and workplace measures like putting up physical barriers around work stations and even enacted some employee screening.
"Our economy here is proportionally more heavily weighted toward industry. If you work on the deck of a scalloper in the North Atlantic, or on the factory floor, Zoom doesn't do you much good. So we've attempted to put in place a number of, what I think are pretty reasonable workplaace measures that are all geared toward hygiene and social distancing," he said. "We had to get out ahead of it, just because of the composition of our workforce, our industrial base here."
