Visitors to the Knox Public Health website looking for the health inspection scores of their favorite restaurants might be surprised to see that the latest data is from 2019.
But that doesn’t mean the County has stopped inspections; Pam Palm, spokeswoman for the agency, said.
“The listing of food service inspection reports on our website is not up to date,” she told the Mount Vernon News.
Knox Public Health has been upgrading the website to show more than the most recent three inspections.
“We started working on a new database to accommodate more reports,” Palm said. “In the meantime, the current system locked up and we were not able to load any new reports, mainly from inspections that took place during the summer.”
The new database is ready, but the COVID-19 pandemic has delayed implementation, Palm explained.
“We are hoping to get that done by the end of December,” she said. “The hold-up to getting the new system up and running has to do more with training than anything else.”
Meanwhile, the pandemic has affected restaurant inspections. Palm said.
“In the spring, our routine inspections were halted due the original stay-at-home order which caused many food service businesses to close,” she said. “When restaurants and other food service operations began opening back up at the start of summer; our food program staff were responsible for working with licensed facilities to provide insight and guidance, and approve plans that were required for businesses to be compliant with new orders from the governor and the Ohio Department of Health.”
Food inspections resumed once restaurants reopened.
But as COVID-19 cases began to soar this fall, inspections have slowed “as all available staff have been asked to help with contact tracing and case monitoring,” Palm said. The food program staff, however, have responded to individual complaints about the frequency of routine inspections being down.
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