These unprecedented times can be unsettling, making us each feel nervous and anxious. We want you to know that, as a Company, we continue to make decisions based on sound reasoning, the best available science and the most up-to-date guidance from our public health and government officials.
In our early response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we put in place several precautionary and preventative measures to protect the health, safety and well-being of our employees, partners, communities and other stakeholder, including:
- Employee screenings
- Equipment cleaning and disinfecting
- Work-from-home policies
- Social distancing
Most recently, some states announced the suspension of non-essential services and operations, leading to many questions regarding our operational plans for manufacturing, distribution and logistics.
We Are An Essential Business
On March 16, 2020 President Trump issued a call: “If you work in a critical infrastructure industry, as defined by the Department of Homeland Security, such as healthcare services and pharmaceutical and food supply, you have a special responsibility to maintain your normal work schedule.”
That call was followed by a “Memorandum on Identification of Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers During COVID-19 Response” by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which outlines the importance of Critical Industry Workers and identifies critical infrastructure sectors and the essential workers needed to maintain the services and functions Americans depend on daily and that need to be able to operate resiliently during the COVID-19 pandemic response. This guidance provides critical infrastructure sectors, for which, Shurtape Technologies provides products directly or indirectly to: packaging & shipping, hardware & supply stores, healthcare, food & agriculture, critical trades (building & construction), energy, transportation & logistics, and critical manufacturing.
Using this guidance, Shurtape Technologies locations are deemed to be Essential business operations and therefore will continue to operate our normal schedule.
Our decision to continue operating is based not only on this guidance, but also on our confidence in the preventative measures we have put in place to protect the health and safety of our employees, our utmost priority.
It is essential we continue to support our country’s response to COVID-19 by ensuring the vital products we make continue to flow to the consumers, professionals and businesses that depend upon them, not only for their day-to-day operations, but also in their fight against this pandemic.