Essential vs. non essential?

Can you let me know what state you are in & if you are being closed because you are a "nonessential" service provider? If you are open business as usual & seeing any patients or just emergency cases?
Optical dispensary open or just professional side seeing patients?
Has any of your governors closed opticals?
This social distancing of 6ft Is impractical in our business /workflow.
Trying to "flatten the curve" should take all professions into account as patients & care providers. Our health Is just as important in this pandemic.


Be safe & good luck out there

We are in Nth GA and so far our county has no confirmed cases (and none pending as far as I know), however there are cases just 30ish miles from us. Last week our doc made a comment and said "if it gets here...." and I said "it's no longer a matter of if, it's a matter of when...". So we are rescheduling our elderly patients that were coming in for routine exams, cleaning the office as a whole twice daily and specific patient areas, doorknobs, etc after every patient. We are no longer having them sign in, going now to verbal check in. We ask every patient when we call to confirm as well as before we take them back all the screening questions as well. Our doc is taking everything into consideration, including the impact closing will have on us as employees financially. These are very trying times for sure!

We are in California.
optical retail businesses (opticians) are listed as essential business under LA County coronavirus order??
https://content.govdelivery.com/atta...ficerOrder.pdf

I reached out to the ABO & Opticians Associations of America (OAA).
The OAA replied:
"Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to the Opticians Association of America.


The following is a copy of the order as publisher in the Los Angeles Times.


Unfortunately, it does not specify optical services. I would recommend you call a town government service to see if emergency optical services would be included. "

Not that helpful. But I will call to find out.

I am in Perrysburg, Ohio practice which has O.D. 's and 1 M.D. Only our Ophth has been seeing emergency pt's and post ops with a skeleton staff. The dispensary has been closed since last week and is tentatively set to re-open April 6.

My boss is taking April 1st as the literal date to restart seeing routine patients, with only minor adjustments. He has an anticipation of reopening full schedule and hours on April 17th.
Our county currently, and later today our state, is under a shelter at home until the end of April. Do routine eye exams fall under necessary during this shelter in place??

(Update: boss has finally seen the writing on the wall, and has pushed back all routines til later in the month)

..

In Virginia, optical providers are considered essential services by our stay at home order. We are open one day a week right now, for pickups only. Contact lens orders are happening by phone and are shipping direct to patients. Even so, Wednesdays are still full of people who shouldn't be in here.

Fortunately the smaller lab that we work with is in a state where they are considered "essential" because we have had more than a few true essential situations. One was a set of lenses for a full-face mask that was N100 (99.97% filtering) for an older critical care MD who had COPD and couldn't even leave his house without wearing something of that level of filtering. Despite the risk, he wanted to be on the frontline because he knew they needed him. Haven't seen him since we got it all taken care of for him. I hope he's ok.