Social Distancing

Persistence is why Vermonters are able to return to many – but not all – of life’s daily routines that abruptly came to a screeching halt back in March.

As we begin resuming some of our activities, we want to caution our residents and their family members to continue to abide by the social distancing, mask wearing and travel guidelines advised by the state of Vermont. Many people are traveling right now, here to Vermont to visit friends and loved ones, as well as traveling out-of-state to get in one more vacation….

Looking across the country, we continue to see a forest fire of COVID-19 spreading in the south and west and things could shift back towards us. We have to keep our guard up, because Vermonters want to move forward, not backward. We now have the lowest number of cases in the nation… our trends in Vermont have held pretty steady. And while, as expected, we’ve seen more cases as we’ve methodically opened back up…

Today, Manchester Medical Center reported, that over the past 72 hours, they have had 42 positive cases and likely 30+ false negative tests (meaning folks may be contagious, but the test doesn’t detect it). This does not indicate what towns or states these people are from. Furthermore, the VT Dept of Health told the Manchester Medical Center that their COVID cases would not be counted in the VT state/county numbers, which is why you are not seeing a change on their website.

As you may have heard, the Manchester Medical Center (34 Bonnet St., Manchester) had 5 positive cases of COVID yesterday, with dozens more tested and awaiting results. Their Facebook post states…

As of June 11, Vermont has seen an new COVID-19 outbreak in Winooski due to family and friends gathering. We want to keep everyone safe here at Equinox Village and urge you to continue following the guidelines set forth by the CDC and Governor Scott.

We value how active our residents are. It’s one of the great things about our community. With that said, the more active each of us becomes in the outside community, the more at risk we are to becoming exposed to COVID-19 and thus bringing it back to Equinox Village.

We want to acknowledge that there is a degree of uncertainty regarding what is safe and unsafe right now. As you know restaurants, retail and other businesses are beginning to open. The weather is finally nice enough to spend more time outside. Vermont has fortunately maintained low numbers of confirmed COVID cases.

We want to do everything we can to prevent residents from acquiring this disease and to keep it from spreading throughout the building. It is for that reason that at this point, we feel it is in the best interest of all residents to not start loosening our guidelines yet. If this disease enters our building, with a resident or staff person becoming ill, we may need instead to add precautions and restrictions, so please bear with us for a few more weeks to be safe.

Even though businesses are opening up in May and restrictions are being loosened, this virus has not gone away. It is still here and it is still hitting neighboring states, some very hard. Please do not think that we are in the clear and it is safe to come and go as we had back in February.