March 13, 2020

John M. Silva

President & CEO

Friends of Greater Lawrence Family Health Center:

Earlier this week Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency for the Commonwealth due to COVID-19 – the coronavirus. As we have seen from news reports the rate of infection has taken off exponentially. I want to assure you that our staff and clinicians are on the ready to deal with this fast-moving and ever-changing pandemic. As many of you know our staff is among the best and the brightest in the Commonwealth and are rallying together as they always do. Our team is also in constant contact with our health care partners in the community and working with our local hospitals – Lawrence General Hospital and Holy Family Hospital in both Haverhill and Methuen.

To this point in the crisis, we are not aware of any GLFHC patients that have tested positive for COVID-19, however as we know, this is a fluid situation and screening is being conducted at all of our sites in order to take all necessary precautions, and separate those people who are ill from those who are not to help limit the spread of the virus.

For more information about COVID-19 and taking personal, safety precautions please go to our website homepage where you can access information from the Centers for Disease Control (in Spanish and English) as well as the Massachusetts Health Department.

Please consider as much social distancing as possible. As this helpful graph shows us, flattening the curve will go a long way to helping us slow down the spread of the virus.

Also, we want you to know the following has been put in place at the health center by our management team:

1. If you or a loved one are a patient of GLFHC and have traveled abroad or to an affected area or if you or a loved one have a respiratory illness, we ask you to follow all CDC guidelines and activities to limit exposure to the virus. We also have protocols in place to isolate and treat those symptomatic patients who do present at the health center.

2. We have suspended hosting all outside groups at the health center until further notice and no meetings or gatherings at the health center with more than 10 people in the room. Zoom conferencing is our new best friend and will be used extensively both internally as well as for attendance at external meetings whenever possible.
3. Also until further notice, we are suspending all work-related travel to conferences, events, and meetings. To that end, we have postponed our Making a Difference Gala and changed the date to June 18, 2020. More information will be forthcoming from our Office of External Relations.