Maine companies that conduct operations around the world have confronted COVID-19 outbreaks in international offices, debilitating travel restrictions and differing reopening timelines.
Originally published by The Portland Press Herald on June 21, 2021
OPERATING IN 47 STATES, 19 NATIONS DURING A PANDEMIC
The Portland-based animal health company Covetrus Inc. – which operates in 47 states and 19 countries including China, Brazil and Australia along with various European countries – has had to adapt to rapidly changing pandemic situations in the United States and around the world over the past year.
Covetrus has a permanent crisis management team, which before the pandemic primarily focused on addressing natural disasters, system outages and other unexpected crises. In the past year and a half, however, the team has shifted to monitoring global COVID-19 conditions, ensuring the safety of its distribution centers and production facilities – which have continued to operate in-person throughout the pandemic – and implementing protocols for remote work.
Vice President and Senior Corporate Counsel Magill Weber, who co-leads the team, explained that addressing the pandemic has required Covetrus to maintain extensive communication among its offices.
“We monitored regularly in all of our jurisdictions,” Weber said. “We have people in 47 U.S. states so we had to monitor 47 state laws, changing those laws around masking … And in all the European countries as well, we had very specific local geographic requirements and the same in Asia and Australia.”
Read the full article here: https://www.pressherald.com/2021/06/21/maines-multinational-firms-still-grapple-with-global-pandemic-conditions/