When we went on hiatus in November, we set a tentative reopening date for January 15th. We crossed our fingers that we would be completely wrong about a post-Thanksgiving spike/winter surge, and that the numbers would stay flat. If that happened, we figured we could open in January.
If you missed our original hiatus decision post, you can read it here. Tl;dr: Covid numbers were uncontrolled and we wanted our staff to stay at home.
We’ve been watching the numbers since then, and I’m sorry to report that things have not improved. Frankly I was appalled by the spike after Thanksgiving; we anticipated a surge, but I wasn’t expecting it to utterly dwarf the Spring peak. As you can see in the graph below, we are a long, long way from the levels we had at the Phase 2 Reopening back in June. If you’d like to look at this graph, and others including transmission rates, positivity rates, and hospitalizations, you can see the Massachusetts page on CovidActNow.org here.
Reopening on January 15th was always optimistic. In light of continued uncontrolled spread and increasing hospitalizations, we will remain on hiatus. We’ve set our next meeting for January 15th to discuss reopening on January 28th. In all honesty, I think January is going to be ugly and reopening on the 28th doesn’t look likely, but we are committed to staying in touch with regular updates.
Stay safe out there,
Sara