UMass Memorial clamping down on employee travel

Photo | Grant Welker UMass Memorial Medical Center's University Campus in Worcester

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By Grant Welker

UMass Memorial Health Care, the largest employer in Central Massachusetts, is seeking to limit where its caregivers travel this summer amid a spike in coronavirus cases in much of the rest of the country.

Any caregivers traveling outside of New England and a few other states where cases have remained low will need to quarantine at home for 14 days using their own paid time off or submit a negative coronavirus test result within 72 hours of restarting work, according to a memo to employees Friday by the UMass Memorial Health Care COVID-19 Task Force. Those employees will need clearance by the employee health office before returning to work, and the task force said it may modify the requirements if it deems it necessary.

Employees involved in medical care will need to inform their manager and the employee health office in advance of their travels.

The new restrictions don't include all five other New England states: Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. They don't include three others with relatively low case numbers: Hawaii, New Jersey and New York. The restrictions begin Saturday.

Seven of those eight states exempted by UMass Memorial have the country's eight lowest per-capita case rates in the past week, according to a tally by The New York Times. Rhode Island's is slightly higher but still below the national average.

The UMass Memorial task force reminded workers to be mindful of wearing protective equipment and to keep social distancing both in and outside of work.

Massachusetts, initially among the hardest hit states by the pandemic, has kept case and death numbers relatively low while much of the rest of the country, particularly in the South, have had ballooning case numbers this summer. Massachusetts has seen a relative uptick lately, with the state's seven-day rolling average in new cases hitting 350 on Thursday, its highest total since June 12. Worcester County hit its highest seven-day total on Monday, also since June 12.