While many people are away from work amid business closures and the limiting of in-office staffing, emergency responders in Lancaster County have not missed a beat.

Good thing, because our safety and health depends on their great work.

Police, EMS crews, firefighters and emergency dispatchers continue to be hard at work as COVID-19 has presented life-altering impacts for so many.

Since Sunday morning, there have been more than 4,000 dispatches from Lancaster County-Wide Communications call center.

Those would be police, EMS or fire responses to 911 and non-emergency calls across Lancaster County from Sunday morning at 8 a.m. to Friday morning at 8 a.m.

Our office cannot express in words just how appreciated these brave first-responders have been through unprecedented circumstances.

The dispatch data was provided by the devoted staff at Lancaster County-Wide Communications.

About 3,000 of those dispatches were police incidents. Officers are practicing extra caution when interacting face-to-face, but their workload has averaged around 600 dispatches per day.

EMS crews have responded to just over 900 dispatches since Sunday.

Firefighters – many of them volunteers – have been called out to 228 fire incidents. (Many of those would not involve working fires.)

We all should stop and consider the heroic actions of these brave individuals.

Their work is essential every day, even before COVID-19’s arrival, but now more than ever, we should be grateful to have such selfless, organized and hard-working emergency responders.

They offered a couple pointers about calling 911:

- Do NOT call 911 about a business that is not closed.

- Do NOT call 911 about someone not practicing social distancing.

Keep our emergency responders in your thoughts. Their jobs will become even busier if the spread of COVID-19 prompts more illness-related calls.

(The included photo, courtesy of Shelby Seaton, is from a recent National Night Out event in Lancaster.)

MEDIA CONTACT: Brett A. Hambright, 717-295-2041; bhambright@co.lancaster.pa.us; Twitter: @BrettHambright