LOCAL HEALTH department officials fear a new Ohio law will hinder their ability to respond to crises, and they say lawmakers should not legislate health care.

Area health directors and administrators said they were disappointed and worried by Thursday’s vote of the General Assembly to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of Senate Bill 22.

The bill limits a governor’s powers during a health emergency.

Supporters in the legislature say it came in response to what many saw as overreach on DeWine’s part in imposing health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, health department officials fear it will complicate their ability to respond to present and future public health emergencies.

“The legislature has already overrode the governor’s veto, so basically from what we’re hearing it’s going to take effect June 22,” Belmont County Deputy Health Commissioner Robert Sproul said. “That’s going to … impact local health and statewide health. Again, now we’re going to legislate health, unfortunately. There’s a lot of things health departments have to do, and we have to move quickly in some respects to help control disease outbreaks, and this is going to add another layer of bureaucracy on top of it, and it’s going to slow our ability to try and control outbreaks.”

Organizations such as the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, UC Health, Akron Children’s Hospital, Metro Health and the Human Service Chamber of Franklin County sent letters in opposition to Senate Bill 22.

DeWine also argued the bill would leave the state open to a multitude of lawsuits during a declared state of emergency and curtail the ability to respond to other possible incidents such as bioterrorism or tainted food.

Garen Rhome, administrator at the Harrison County Health Department, said the bill raised “a strong, serious concern on our ability to protect the public health, not just now but certainly in the future.”

He said Harrison County’s department joined with the Association of Ohio Health Commissioners in drafting and sending a letter expressing concerns about Senate Bill 22.

“When it was first moving through the legislature, it had impacts on the Ohio Department of Health and the governor’s authority. On March 10 or so it got modified and really started to impact local boards of health, your counties, your municipalities, 113 local boards of health essentially throughout Ohio,” he said.

“Frankly, we have serious concerns about Senate Bill 22, which goes into effect in approximately 90 days now. With the override, we have serious concerns that this law will impact our ability — the local board of health’s ability, and not just here but across the state of Ohio — to protect the public’s health,” Rhome said. “Really Senate Bill 22 limits the ability of local boards of health to issue orders to businesses or multiple occasions of businesses and limits the ability to issue orders of quarantine or isolation for slowing or preventing the spread of communicable diseases in the community.

“That’s the gravest concern, we think, at the health department and across Ohio,” Rhome said. “Local health orders are crucial tools for allowing time for full investigations of a communicable disease situation before it becomes urgent or worsens. Frankly, the limitations of Senate Bill 22 could force local efforts to be hindered before actions could be taken to contain it. … We need to be able to act quickly at times in order to prevent the potential spread of a disease.”

Rhome added he fears the bill could have a negative impact on public health in the long term, after the coronavirus pandemic has passed.

“It really goes beyond the scope of COVID-19,” he said. “The next virus or the next pandemic, which may not happen for another 100 years, but what does it look like? For example right now as we speak there are, I think, 44 individuals in Ohio — not locally here — but 44 individuals who have recently returned from areas in Africa where Ebola is present, and the Ohio Department of Health has the authority to ask those individuals to quarantine for a certain amount of time when they return to the state of Ohio. It’s very likely that Senate Bill 22, in this example, would hinder the local or state health board … from being able to enforce any sort of quarantine or isolation against those individuals.”

“On behalf of the board of health and the Ohio Association of Health Commissioners … we’ll be ready to adapt. The law will be translated into some sort of guidance for the Ohio Department of Health and local boards of health. We’ll adapt to that guidance and go from there.”

In Monroe County, which twice has had the state’s highest occurrence rate of COVID-19 per capita, Health Commissioner Linda Dick said she hoped the health department could work more closely with legislators and explain the potential consequences of the bill.

“I was disappointed but not surprised, in the environment we’re living today,” she said. “But I hate to see them legislating the delivery of health care, and that’s what it’s coming down to. I think that if you have an outbreak, especially in today’s world, we’ve got a mobile society. We’ve got people in our state right now that supposedly have been exposed to Ebola, and if you cannot quarantine until you get these test results, you’re just multiplying the problem. You’re just making it bigger and bigger.

“I know people don’t want to be quarantined and businesses don’t want to be, but when there’s an outbreak that needs to be done until you see what’s going on. And to protect the health of the public, that’s what it boils down to. But if you have to wait for everybody to go get a test and be confirmed before you can do anything, I’m afraid there’s going to be a lot of people that’s going to be harmed.

“Right now when we get a positive (COVID-19) result on somebody, we do contact-tracing. We check that person out and those people they give us as contacts. We quarantine them, and it’s amazing how many of those people within four to five days start showing symptoms, get tested and they’re positive,” she said. “I don’t see how you’re going to control any disease.”

Dick said she hopes people will balance personal responsibility with the hardships of quarantine.

“I’m sure there are people who have the foresight that if they’re sick they will take measures, but that’s not everybody, by no stretch of the imagination,” she said.