Hi everyone, it’s Kevin. Today is Tuesday, April 6th (day recorded). Yesterday we hosted Acting Secretary of the Navy Tom Harker who visited our Groton and Quonset Point facilities. Joining the Secretary were Admiral Goggins, the Program Executive Officer for Submarines, and Admiral Pappano, the PEO for the Columbia Program. Members of our federal delegation who took part included Senator Blumenthal, Senator Reed, Representative Joe Courtney and Representative Jim Himes.
Secretary Harker, who assumed his duties on January 20th of this year, is a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard. His career was marked by operational success including multi-ton drug seizures on the high seas. In fact, he told us a story about the Eagle, that’s anchored across the way from Electric Boat here in Groton. I didn’t know this, but apparently the Eagle was seized after World War II. It was a training ship for German submarine crews to train on how to operate the engine room. It was seized after the war and converted to a U.S. Coast Guard training ship.
During the tour of our operations in Groton, Secretary Harker was given a demonstration of ship control; he also toured the COATs facility, the Active Learning Centers in Building 260 and the South Yard Assembly Building construction site. At Quonset Point, the Secretary and congressional delegation toured the Virginia Module Outfitting Building, the Virginia Payload Module Annex and the Columbia Common Missile Compartment and Tube Outfitting Building. So it was a pretty packed afternoon.
It’s always a privilege to showcase the great work you do in the continued defense of our nation. He was impressed by your skill, dedication and our teamwork. Thank you for that.
On the COVID front, I am reminding everyone that Hartford HealthCare is offering an additional vaccination clinic for EB employees-only this coming Sunday, April 11th at Foxwoods—so it’s happening on a weekend and should be a little bit more convenient for everybody. Yesterday, our EB Wellness Team sent out an email with the details, and we’ll provide a link in this transcript. The clinic is available to employees only right now; spouses and dependent children are not yet eligible. In addition, there may still be spots available at the EB-only clinics taking place this Friday, April 9th at Foxwoods, the Oakdale Theater and the Xfinity Theater as people cancel or re-schedule.
We continue to request vaccines from Governor Lamont in Connecticut and Governor McKee in Rhode Island so we can vaccinate our employees quickly and efficiently at our onsite clinics. As the vaccine becomes more plentiful, we feel we could greatly accelerate vaccination of our employees if we could get doses to our onsite clinics. This also helps you from having to travel to get your vaccine. Thousands of you take advantage of our annual flu vaccination clinics, and we know we would have a good turnout if we were to offer the COVID vaccine here.
We will continue to request vaccines; in the meantime, I encourage all of you to get vaccinated when and where you can. Right now, it takes some patience and persistence to get an appointment since vaccine eligibility has opened up to larger groups in both states this week. If you have been vaccinated, please let our EB Medical Team know via the link on the Coronavirus page on Homeport or the banner link at the top of the EB Landing home page. This information is helping us determine how the EB team is progressing with the vaccine and will allow us to gauge how many vaccines to request from Connecticut and Rhode Island in the event we do get the opportunity to administer our own.
Thanks everyone; we’ll talk again soon.
