Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has its finger on the pulse of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the home of top researchers in the field of infectious disease — which makes its decision to return to stricter restrictions on its own campus a possible sign of things to come for the broader region.
“We are seeing an alarming rise in the rate of community transmission, and all indications are that the situation in our region will continue deteriorating,” said Thomas Lynch, the Fred Hutch president, and Steve Stadum, chief operating officer, in a memo to employees Thursday, outlining the plan to again limit access to only those who need to be on-site for their jobs.
Meanwhile, in a live address Thursday evening, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee made a new appeal to residents to avoid holiday gatherings outside of their households. He and his wife Trudi Inslee acknowledged the disappointment that many families will feel, describing the traditions that they will miss this year, but called it a critical step following a doubling of daily COVID-19 cases in the past two weeks.
Gov. Inslee acknowledged that the state has fared better than many others, and alluded to progress in developing vaccines.
“We are in as dangerous a position today as we were in March,” he said. “We’re in a period of what’s called exponential growth, and every single day matters. We cannot wait until our hospitals’ halls are lined with gurneys waiting for rooms before we take decisive action.”
He also signaled tighter restrictions ahead.
“This is a temporary situation. We will get back to normal. The Calvary is on the way,” Inslee said. “But we need to keep people alive until it gets here. Every idea until then is on the table except for the idea of failing to contain this virus.”
“In the next few days, we will be announcing some further measures to prevent this from spreading,” he said. “These decisions will affect what we do outside of the home.”
The state has averaged more than 1,500 daily COVID-19 cases in recent days. Hospitalizations have also been on the rise.
Update, Nov. 13: Inslee, along with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, issued a travel advisory and recommended a 14-day quarantine for interstate and international travel.
In King County, home to the tech centers of Bellevue, Redmond, and Seattle, the seven-day rolling average of positive cases now tops 400 a day, after dropping to a rolling average of less than 50 cases a day at times in the late spring.
At the same time, the fatality rate from the disease remains well below its peak in the state earlier this year. The outbreak in the state has been less severe than in most other states by almost every measure.
At Fred Hutch, the new limitations come even though there have been no known instances of COVID-19 transmission on its campus.
“Hospitals locally and nationally are near, at or even over capacity, and many are having to turn away patients and cancel elective procedures,” Lynch and Stadum said in the memo to Fred Hutch employees. “Health care staffing is also of great concern, even more so than it was earlier this year, given that all parts of the country are now being affected simultaneously.”
After instituting broad restrictions in the early days of the pandemic, Fred Hutch has been allowing more of its employees back on campus in recent months, including up to 25% of office-based researchers and research administrators, and all lab-based researchers. Although the number varies, officials said as many as 1,000 of Fred Hutch’s total workforce of about 3,000 people have been on campus regularly.
On any given day, about 80 to 100 of those who’ve been working on the Seattle campus are in jobs that don’t require them to be on-site, Fred Hutch officials estimate.
The new restrictions start Monday and will be in effect until at least Jan. 4. In their memo, Lynch and Stadum called it “absolutely vital that we all take personal responsibility for our behaviors at all times, on-campus and off,” including wearing face masks, maintaining six feet of physical distance, avoiding groups, washing their hands and avoiding touching their faces.
“As employees of the Hutch, you are leaders within your communities and can encourage your families, friends and neighbors to take the steps that science has proven can reduce the spread of this virus,” they wrote.
Researchers, administrators and other employees based in offices and dry labs will no longer be allowed to work on the Fred Hutch campus. Researchers and staff in wet labs will still be allowed, with physical distancing, in addition to security and facilities workers and others whose jobs require them to be on site.
Seattle-area tech giants Amazon and Microsoft were some of the first large companies to allow remote work as the pandemic hit earlier this year. Amazon last month extended its remote work policy to June 2021. Microsoft released new “hybrid workplace” guidance that will allow employees to work from home freely for less than 50% of their working week, and managers will be able to approve permanent remote work.
