COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Ends

At Lynn Community Health Center, we are immensely proud of the work and care all of our staff have shown, and continue to show, to our patients and the community at large when they were needed most. From educating, testing, and vaccinating here at our facility and the Lynn Tech Mass Vaccination Site to meeting our wonderful community where they were at their places of worship, businesses and going door to door, our teams stepped up in unimaginable ways during the most unprecedented of times.

Over 96,000 tests (many more at-home test kits given out) and over 101,000 vaccinations have been administered through Lynn Community Health Center.

The PHE is over thanks to a combination of factors including widespread immunity against severe disease, available vaccines and therapeutics, and less virulent variants; our work here at LCHC will of course continue. Effective Friday, May 12th, our Infection Control Committee has updated our patient and visitor policies as appropriate.

Lynn Community Health Center remains committed to keeping staff, patients, and our community safe. As we have from the very beginning of our COVID-19 Emergency Response on March 4^th, 2020 (1,164 days ago!), we are taking into account all data available and best and current practices at our fellow institutions, including our local hospitals. In the future if there is a need to consider the return to an increased state of infection control, the Infection Control Committee will review the current state at the time and make recommendations.

We worked quickly from the very beginning to prepare our clinical and operational spaces to safely separate staff, and when we had our first positive test result at LCHC, we immediately separated our spaces to our respiratory clinic and our “well patient” clinic. We transformed our health center over one weekend in March 2020! Staff worked almost around the clock to scale and prepare telewellness capabilities as we pivoted to provide as much care as possible, as safely as possible, to as many patients as possible, and as quickly as possible.

Thanks to the financial stewardship of LCHC leadership and to donations from our community, we were able to keep all staff employed. Some staff were redeployed to new jobs and work; often, due to how quickly the situation was evolving, that work changed from day to day (some workflows changed multiple times throughout one day!). Additionally, we learned from healthcare institutions who were “ahead of us” in the COVID-19 curve, and we segmented our staff teams to control the inevitable spread as much as possible.

It seems a blur of time, but we take a moment to remember:

“Our daily presence and work is central to everyone’s lives. Without the work we are doing (testing people, recommending isolation, checking in with those most at risk, educating the most vulnerable on strategies to avoid getting sick), there will be not return to normal. From the gifts of meals [provided by the Board and our community friends] to the many kudos we are receiving, the community admires you, recognizes its reliance on you, and wants to support you. We are not alone, and our community is proud of us.” — Dr. Kiame Mahaniah, COVID-19-era CEO

COVID-19 kept on longer than most of us initially imagined, and all the while life continued. Graduations, weddings, births, deaths, hobbies, and more, albeit many in a re-imagined semi-remote state. In June, after George Floyd’s murder on May 25th, staff participated in the #WhiteCoats4BlackLives moment in a commitment to making LCHC an actively anti-racist institution. That commitment stands today as we continue to not just design systems of healthcare equity for our patients and continue taking active measures to ensure equity for our staff in all parts of our organization.

On June 30th, 2020, Massachusetts reported no new deaths due to COVID-19 in the Commonwealth since the beginning of the declared global pandemic. That summer, MA launched the “Stop the Spread” testing program in communities across Massachusetts that were seeing a higher number of residents testing positive for COVID-19, increasing accessibility dramatically with free test sites. LCHC became a Stop the Spread site until the state program ended. We opened a trailer testing site in the Buffum St parking lot, testing more than 650 patients on our busiest days (and open in all weather!). As MA’s Reopening Plan phases began and we kept on eye on Lynn’s metrics, we carefully and gladly brought more staff back on site for expanded in-person patient care.

LCHC received our first delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine on December 22nd, 2020 and began vaccinating staff the next day. On January 29th, 2021, a cross-functional team met at the Lynn Technical Vocational Institute Field House as we prepared to open a mass vaccination site in partnership with the City of Lynn Department of Public Health. At peak, over 6,000 patients came through per week to receive COVID‐19 vaccination doses at this site.

In addition to our Health Center locations and the Mass Vaccination site at Lynn Tech, our staff also provided COVID-19 testing and vaccines to our community through our Mobile Testing and Vaccine program, bringing these much-needed resources directly to our community at churches, schools, community organizations, festivals, and neighborhood street corners. True to our mission, we proudly provided hundreds of vaccine doses and over a thousand hours of education and conversation around the safety and efficacy of these vaccines as our community and patients made their own decisions on their healthcare.

At Lynn Community Health Center, we are fully committed to providing high quality, comprehensive healthcare to everyone in our community.

To our patients who trust us, thank you.

To our community partners who collaborate with us to meet our community’s needs, thank you.

To the donors and supporters whose funding and resource commitments made this possible, thank you.

And to our staff, who day after day provide both immediate and compassionate care and strategic vision, thank you.