Tarrant County had a ‘disjointed’ response to COVID-19 emergency, report concludes

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Tarrant County’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was often “disjointed,” with poor communication and officials failing to follow established emergency plans, according to an external review of the county government.

The county lacked a clear chain of command, resulting in some county departments duplicating efforts, with other staff working triple their normal workload, according to the report.

The report was completed in conjunction with IEM, a contractor hired by Tarrant County in 2021 to review the first 19 months of the pandemic, as well as the 2020 protests, the sheltering of Hurricane Laura evacuees, and the 2021 winter storm. The report’s goal was to understand the county’s strengths and weaknesses during the unprecedented upheaval of 2020 and 2021, and to serve “as a tool to guide updates as response and recovery efforts continue.”

The report highlighted numerous strengths in the county’s response, in particular its communication with cities and nonprofit groups, its messaging to the public, including public health dashboards, and responding to evolving public health recommendations.

The county’s main weakness was that it lacked a formal command structure that could provide a clear understanding of responsibilities for departments and employees. Emergency plans that had been established before the pandemic were not followed, the report said.

The Star-Telegram contacted all five members of the commissioners court. Three did not respond. Commissioner Alisa Simmons asked for questions about the report, but did not immediately respond. The office administrator for Commissioner Gary Fickes said Fickes would reach out if he had time, but he, too, did not immediately respond.

Adding to the confusion, elected officials were not required to complete training on Incident Command System protocols, a core part of emergency management. Their lack of understanding of existing plans “led to confusion.” Sometimes, county officials would coordinate directly with the state to plan free COVID testing sites, leaving public health and emergency operations, the departments tasked with planning such sites, surprised during public meetings when testing sites were changed.

Emergency management and public health “planners regularly learned that previously identified locations were removed or replaced by other locations during commissioners court meetings,” the report said.

The county also initially struggled with its work-from-home policy, as many employees who were eligible to work from home did not have laptops that would have enabled them to do so. And groups of employees who could not work remotely were “frequently exposed to COVID-19”, like the epidemiology division of Tarrant County Public Health and employees of the medical examiner’s office, leaving vital positions unfilled. Both groups of employees had capabilities that could not “be backfilled by other employees,” creating “significant capability gaps for extended periods,” the report said.

County Administrator Chandler Merritt said at a public meeting county departments have gone through an interview process to better understand work-from-home needs. His office, for example, is “100% on laptops,” he said.

“We’ve actually enhanced the ability to do work from home should something like that happen,” he said.

Katie McCoy, with IEM, gave a presentation about the report’s findings in Aug. 9, 2022, before the report was completed. The final report was not filed to commissioners until 18 months later, on Feb. 21. Neither IEM nor Tarrant County officials responded to questions for the Star-Telegram about why the final version of the report wasn’t filed until 18 months after the initial presentation was given publicly.

The report also includes an improvement plan, with space for check-ins and points of contact for each aspect of the plan. The improvement plan presented to the public does include any dates for implementing the recommendations.

“Once the court receives and files the report, that will take it upon us to at a staff level, probably through the next budget process, to review all of these recommendations, and see what is...attainable as far as implementation,” Merritt said.