Baker and COVID-19 Virus Preparedness old
Baker and COVID-19 Virus Preparedness
For almost 70 years, it has been our mission to deliver the very best in contamination control equipment so that our customers have the equipment they need to make breakthroughs in science and clinical care. Never has this mission been more important than it is right now. In this new, uncertain environment created by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are dedicated to ensuring the safety of our employees, while continuing to provide our customers with the tools they need to advance science and clinical care.
Baker is and will continue to follow guidance from state and other officials, most recently as issued by Maine’s governor and state CDC director on 12 March. We will monitor this and stay current with the most recent directives. Below is some information on specific actions and plans we are undertaking:
Measures Protecting our Employees
The health and safety of our employees is our top priority, to protect them and reduce risk of spread of the virus. This is critical not only for their health, but also to maintain our ability to supply biosafety cabinets needed for virus response by our health care system. As such we have implemented the following measures:
- Increased surface sanitization of our facility.
- Cancelling employee travel that is not considered essential.
- Postponing large meetings and trainings scheduled to occur at our facility during the next month (future events will be re-evaluated on a rolling basis), particularly those involving travel of participants from outside the state.
- Encouraging employees who experience symptoms, or have family members that do, to stay at home.
Maintaining our Ability to Supply Equipment
As biological safety cabinets are needed for diagnosis and treatment of patients, it is critical that we do all we can to maintain supply to our customers. In order to increase our ability to do this we have the following plans:
- Establish work at home capability for critical support and administrative employees.
- Prepare for overtime work to make up for any reduction in capacity due to employee illness related absence in production.
- Survey critical suppliers to assess their ability to continue to provide us components and raw materials.
Suppliers in our most recent survey did not anticipate any disruption in the supply chain. We will repeat this survey periodically. For most components we have multiple vendors qualified should one be unable to meet our requirements. Unfortunately, a few of our components are “single sourced” and built to a Baker specification, in which case disruption could impact our deliveries to customers.
Supporting Virus Response
As a supplier of critical safety equipment to hospitals, clinics, and laboratories, Baker is committed to supporting the public health response to this crisis. We have not yet taken the measure of providing higher priority to orders received from such facilities, but we anticipate the possibility that this may be necessary as the situation evolves.
To the extent that some customers may be aware that their projects will be delayed due to the impact of the virus, it would be useful to know that as soon as possible. This would allow us to replace those orders that might be voluntarily delayed with priority orders for virus response. Please let us know if you wish to delay your order’s shipment as soon as possible, and we will attempt to accommodate the request.
The situation is obviously fluid as new guidance emerges, and as further containment measures are implemented. Baker will evolve our response strategy as necessary.
