With 11 days to go before the presidential election on November 3, it's hard to ignore the voices of the media, our neighbors and friends who are expressing distrust and discontentment in the days leading up to the election. This year, the decisions that we will make, as American citizens, will reverberate for a generation to come, through all three branches of American government and across the world. The election of our future president in November represents one of the starkest choices between two competing visions for the nation's future. Your vote will help determine the course of our country. I urge you to let your voice be heard. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Your voice is your vote.
We are helping our residents use their voice and vote by arranging continuous transportation to early voting sites today and next Friday, october 30. We are urging our residents who want to vote in person to avoid the large crowds and vote early. Residents may call our Transportation Office to arrange a ride to the early voting sites. Of course, we are encouraging face coverings, social distancing and hand hygiene while at the voting sites. In our Plaza View assisted living and Early Memory Support neighborhoods, officials from the Office of Maricopa County Recorder, Adrian Fontes, came to the campus two weeks ago to assist those residents who needed help with voter registration and to help those who had difficulty filling out their ballots, either due to cognitive issues or physical limitations. They provided a safe and secure environment on campus so that our residents could have the opportunity to have their voices heard through voting while under COVID-19 restrictions.
On another note, Arizona is seeing a rise in COVID-19 cases. Dr. Cara Christ, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, said that Arizona is at a pivotal moment for COVID-19 and reminds everyone to be mindful of wearing masks, keeping a social distance, avoiding crowds and washing hands often. Although the cases seen today in Arizona are not at the level of our spikes in June and July, the number of cases is trending upward and need to be taken seriously. Here, at Beatitudes Campus, we received word of resident in Independent Living (Plaza South), who is positive for COVID-19 and is currently in the hospital being treated. Contact tracing of staff and residents who may have had contact with the resident is being conducted. On Tuesday, October 20, we tested 370 staff and contractors, and out of those 370, 359 were negative and the remaining 11 needed to be retested as their samples were damaged in transit. We retested nine people today and expect the results by this evening. If the remaining come back negative this evening, this will be the third week in a row that all results were negative.
The expanded visitation and staged re-openings we have had in the past few weeks are going well for all areas of our campus. We continuously monitor the coronavirus metrics in our community, so that we can pivot if we need to in order to keep our Beatitudes community of residents, staff and families safe. In the next week or two, we will present our guidelines for holiday celebrations.
Please reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions or need clarification of anything. We appreciate that our entire community is working together as we navigate through our world.
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