Hi everyone, it’s Kevin. It’s Monday, November 30th (date recorded). I hope each of you had a safe and restful Thanksgiving break. Now that we are into the holiday period, we are hearing a lot of news about surges in COVID infection rates. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, we are continuing to see increased infection rates across our communities.
I think it is appropriate to take the time to let you know the Senior Leadership Team and I are staying vigilant and taking precautions to minimize the spread of the virus here at EB.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, a team has been meeting regularly to ensure we are taking common-sense steps to maintain a safe workplace. To help us safely continue working until the holiday shutdown, we’ve taken some additional measures to minimize the impact COVID has on each of us.
- We continue to encourage virtual meetings and have postponed all non-essential training activities through mid-January 2021—at least for now; it may extend beyond that. For example, we’ve suspended OSHA 30 training until we can return to a more normal condition.
- Only “Mission Critical” travel is authorized. This includes travel via the EB Shuttle, which is now traveling at limited capacity.
- We’ve reduced occupancy in break spaces, and I encourage each of you to stagger break and lunch times whenever possible.
- We continually monitor our supplies of PPE and cleaning and disinfecting materials and are making every effort to clean our facilities more frequently. If you identify an area in need of cleaning, please let your supervisor know so we can take action.
- When a positive case is identified, we conduct aggressive contact tracing and maintain a supply of several thousand test kits to allow our Medical teams to test as frequently as needed.
- While human beings are social creatures and tend to gather together, we are encouraging those of you who are capable of working from home to do so. This reduces density and has proven effective in minimizing person-to-person spread.
- You’ve heard me say many times that if you are sick, please stay home. It is especially true now. Just today, I heard of several cases of people who reported to work sick, only to walk in to one of our clinics and then be sent home anyway. This is important for many reasons. First, don’t put your co-workers at risk of unnecessary infection by coming to work, period. Second, our medical staff is working incredibly hard to keep us safe. When someone is not feeling well and reports to medical, you risk infecting our medical team. Just like in the community, our medical personnel are few in number and important to our ability to perform our mission. Please don’t put them at risk. I know some people who choose to come to work sick may be concerned about time off. Please talk to your supervisor if you have any concerns about time away from work—but please, stay home if you are sick.
I’ll be back with another update later this week as we continue to monitor the situation—until then, please stay safe and healthy.
Thanks—Kevin
