NRAO/GBO update - Fri Nov 20th
The North American NRAO/GBO instruments/support systems are online and performing well. In Chile, ALMA continues its progress on the road to restart.
Local/regional COVID infection rates continue to climb. We are now dealing with several cases each week – the typical event is an employee in contact with a family member or friend who tests positive, or in recent contact with someone who is positive. In the past two weeks we’ve had some major quarantine events at the sites, with dozens of people affected. Our safety team and site managers have done a great job over the past several months to produce a safer working environment at the Observatories… but success in keeping everyone safe in coming weeks is going to rely on your actions. With Thanksgiving and the end of year holidays approaching, we strongly recommend you avoid all large gatherings, including extended family events. In crises like this pandemic, it can be hard to identify what you as an individual can do to help – well, the answer now is really clear. Have a quiet Turkey day, avoid travel and large social events, maintain physical distancing. Same for the end of year holidays. Something as simple as having some family over for a meal seems harmless, but this kind of close contact is driving the pandemic right now.
To lower the chances of contamination during this period where the risks may be increased in public, I’m announcing here that the Observatories (NRAO/GBO) are going to cancel all non-critical Observatory meetings and facility activities between December 14thand January 18th. We’re going to have a “quiet month”, where we keep the density of people in the facilities as low as possible. We’re not shutting down, and people still need to report to work as normal/planned, but … on the facilities side, we’re going to halt unnecessary activities, put new initiatives on hold, scale back regular tasks as possible, etc. This is not a return to IDOS or the skeleton crew approach used earlier this year, but we need to stand down from current levels of people in the buildings/facilities where we can. In the next week or so our supervisors, Dept Heads and Directors will produce a list of remaining events and activities during this month,and don’t hesitate to argue with them to take things off the list. Some scaling back of site activities may begin immediately. Hopefully people will be taking vacation through a lot of this time, anyway. During this time your main responsibility is to protect yourselves and your families/coworkers – stay as isolated as possible, maintain physical distancing, the use of masks at all times in public, and enhanced personal hygiene (hand washing) remain important. The most important thing you can do for yourself, your friends and family, coworkers and your country is to: minimize contact with people and travel over the next 4-8 weeks, adopt an enhanced defensive posture in your personal lives. That’s how as individuals we can each pay back the debt we owe to the NSF and the US taxpayers for looking after us so well this year.
If national/regional infection rates continue to grow as they are now (particularly in NM and WV), it is entirely possible we will need to return to a partial of full Infectious Disease Operating Status (IDOS) within in the next few weeks, i.e. return to skeleton crew levels of staffing in the facilities. As always, our commitment is to keep people safe at work, and your responsibility is to conduct your personal lives safely to minimize our shared risks. Let’s work together carefully and closely over the next several weeks to minimize our contacts/exposures. We will get to the other side of this pandemic… let’s all get there, with our friends, families and communities intact.
If you need COVID information or support, please contact your supervisor, Dept Head, ESS or me. The website containing all our info is: https://info.nrao.edu/covid-19. As always, many thanks to our Safety and Computing infrastructure teams for keeping us safe and functional. Take care of yourselves, and stay safe.
Tony Beasley
