Bogan Shire businesses and services close to reduce COVID-19 spread

Bogan Shire mayor Ray Donald said the council would continue to monitor the national coronavirus pandemic.

In the Bogan Shire, community facilities including the the pool, flood memorial park camping area, shearing shed museum, Men's Shed, the Town Hall, Senior Citizens hall, CWA hall and halls at Collerreina, Coolabah and Hermidale are closed until further notice.

The visitor information centre and museum are also closed.

The Bogan Shire library are providing a click and collect service and encourage users to access their online services through the North Western Library website.

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"We're still keeping our operations open at the medical centre, we've still got our staff out on the roads, everything at the moment is still saying operational, but if [the government] shut everything down that will change very quickly," Cr Donald said.

The mayor said as the drought and the uncertainty of the pandemic continue, the effects on the community both socially and economically are "severe".

"Economically its a terribly severe situation, and we hope that the stimulus packages can reach out to our people and help them in their respective areas," he said.

"There's some help but it is a very severe time and unknown for how long that will continue. I think its been said by a lot of people its probably the worst crisis that will be experienced by people in their lifetime.

"Evidently we've seen things before and historically history repeats itself.

"While there has been crisis, communities do recover and I know this will be the same, but as we experience it we don't know the severity of it or the duration of it."

Cr Donald has encouraged residents to follow the government's directives and practice social distancing and good hygiene to help reduce the spread of the virus.

"I hope that if we're isolated and we practice hygiene measures, the distancing, look after disadvantaged people and stay at home as much as possible, we can minimise the outbreak of the spread of it here," he said.

"It's naive to think we'll miss it all together ... but if we do what we can to reduce the spread, we're doing what we can to minimise the affect its going to have on residents in the Bogan Shire."