Tag: COVID

You get to wear slippers all day. You don’t have to commute. You have more flexibility with childcare. After a year of remote work, is the office a thing of the past? 

A high local vaccination rate makes the return to in-person work feasible for many area businesses, but that doesn’t mean everyone is headed back in. Some outfits have ditched office space and others are downsizing, as hybrid work arrangements become more common.  

Before COVID hit, many businesses were already accommodating employees who wanted to work from home occasionally—but others had to scramble. “When the shutdown happened, Albemarle County didn’t have a teleworking policy,” says Emily Kilroy, director of communications and public engagement for the county. “Within three days, people were sent home, and we had to make sure they had the equipment and IT they needed—which sometimes meant borrowing or renting laptops.”

ArcheMedX, which develops software for life sciences and health care clients, was at the other end of the spectrum. “We have always had some remote employees, but most worked in our downtown office,” says Joel Selzer, co-founder and CEO. “As soon as the pandemic hit, we moved everyone to remote. We got them whatever they needed—workstations, desks, even furniture—from the office, and everything else we gave away or put into storage.” And the firm isn’t looking back. The company used to rent offices on East Main Street, but gave up the space last summer.

“Our offices never went completely remote—we had staggered schedules, so attorneys could come in to work with staff a couple days a week,” says Mike Griffin, business manager at Tucker Griffin Barnes P.C., a law firm with four offices in central Virginia. “The decision now is when to allow clients back into the office, and how do we do that safely.”

After safety, the big concern for employers and their workers is child care. “Fifty percent of our employees have children under the age of 18 at home,” says Kilroy, so the re-opening of schools was a critical factor in bringing employees back. Tim Tessier, one of the principals at Bushman Dreyfus Architects, agrees: “I have teenaged boys, and we had homeschooled for a while—but that’s not as challenging as for employees who have grade-school kids.”

As schools and daycares re-open, why would employees want to continue working from home? “Productivity,” says Dawn Heneberry, managing director of wealth management firm Old Dominion Capital Management. “Our employees have found they can get so much more done at home. But they also need contact with colleagues and clients to be part of a team. So they’re telling us they want a hybrid model, where they can be in the office two or three days a week.”

“Sometimes the need to focus [on a project] means working from home works better,” Tessier says. “But a lot of what architects do is collaborative—showing your ideas to a colleague, noodling it through. Some of our teams have been getting together for meetings with masks.” His 14-person firm is in the process of developing a hybrid model that combines the best of both approaches. “We recently had our first face-to-face all-office meeting [since the shutdown]—which was just really nice.”

But business owners also have to consider their customers’ needs and expectations. While most people seem to have adapted to Zoom meetings and digital data exchange, many still prefer in-person interaction. “We’ve given clients the option to meet anywhere they felt comfortable—in our office, at their home, outdoors at a restaurant, on Zoom,” says Heneberry. “I think that will continue.”

Then there are logistical concerns. Would a hybrid model, allowing both remote and in-office work, mean supplying employees with high-tech workstations in both places?  Do employees still need individual office space if they are only coming in one or two days a week? With employees working flexible hours, how does the company ensure responsive service and client coverage? Many of these decisions have an impact on the bottom line. 

What about offices themselves? Pre-pandemic, Kilroy says, Albemarle County had almost outgrown its downtown office building and was leasing additional space. Now, with a teleworking policy in place, every manager is being asked to designate which positions can offer flexibility and which will require on-site work, so the county can reassess its space needs.

ArcheMedX, which currently has core staff working out of office space at Vault Virginia, is also in the process of deciding what’s next. “We’ve proved we can do much more than we thought we could virtually, but there are times when being together with a white board is necessary,” says Selzer. “We’ll likely continue in a hybrid model, with some [physical] presence downtown—Charlottesville is still the heart and soul of ArcheMedX.” 

“I hope we can embrace what has worked,” says Selzer, “but there’s always a time and a need to meet face to face.”  

After months of reporting on the local COVID-19 vaccine rollout, I finally received the email I had patiently been waiting for: I was eligible to get the shot. I  scheduled my appointment and headed over to the vaccination clinic inside the former JCPenney at Fashion Square Mall the next day. The long Moderna line moved quickly enough, and I was out the door around two hours later, with a pink bandaid on my arm, a vaccine card in my hand, and a huge smile on my face.

For many in the Charlottesville area, the anxious wait for a vaccine will also soon be over.

On April 12, the Blue Ridge Health District moved into phase 2 of vaccine distribution, meaning all residents age 16 and older are now eligible to receive a free jab. Those who want one must pre-register with the Virginia Department of Health, and wait for an email or phone call from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention inviting them to schedule an appointment. Vaccine appointments may also be available directly from local pharmacies.

“All vaccine appointments will remain by appointment only,” says health district spokesman Jason Elliott. “Maybe one day down the line we’ll have the option to expand to walk-ins, but that’s going to depend on a consistent supply [and] other factors.”

Because the Charlottesville area has a high population of health care workers and senior citizens, it took the health district much longer to move through the rollout’s initial phases than other parts of the state, Elliott says.

“One of the biggest challenges that we’ve had…is limited vaccine supply,” he says of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. “Even though we had staffing and people who wanted the vaccine, we didn’t necessarily have enough vaccines to make all of those moving parts come together.”

There have been other kinks in the complicated rollout process. Since vaccines became more widely available, area residents jockeyed for position in the virtual vaccine lines, traveling to other localities to seek shots. Recently, some mixed messaging from the state sent waves of central Virginia residents south to a Danville mass vaccination site, only for the state to halt walk-ins at the clinic a few days later. 

In Charlottesville, vaccine seekers at the JCPenney site, and its predecessor in the old Kmart parking lot, have occasionally experienced long lines. 

There have been small-scale technical difficulties, too. Last week the Blue Ridge Health District tweeted an apology for an email that erroneously told users their vaccine appointments had been canceled. 

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was temporarily halted on April 13 due to a rare type of blood clot, had significantly sped up the vaccine rollout. Before the pause, BRHD administered several thousand doses of that vaccine each week. Of the almost 7 million doses of the J&J vaccine given in the United States, six women, between the ages of 18 and 48, reported clotting symptoms six to 13 days after vaccination.  

Per the Virginia Department of Health’s latest data, around 20,000 Charlottesville residents—almost half of the city’s population—have received at least one dose of the three vaccines, and around 10,000 are fully vaccinated. In Albemarle, nearly half of the county’s population—around 53,000 people—have also received one dose, and around 30,000 are fully vaccinated.

Across Virginia, about 3,100,000 residents—36 percent of the state population—have received at least one dose, and about 1,800,000—21 percent of the population—are fully vaccinated. On average, nearly 75,000 vaccine doses are administered each day. The commonwealth currently ranks 13th out of 50 states in percent of residents who have received at least one shot, according to The New York Times.

In addition to administering vaccines at its Seminole Square and Fashion Square Mall sites, BRHD will continue to host at least one vaccine clinic in every locality within its jurisdiction per month, in an effort to reach residents living in rural areas.

To get the vaccine out to Black and Latinx communities, the health district has partnered with an array of community organizations to host clinics in neighborhoods, apartment complexes, churches, and other easily accessible locations. It’s also hired Spanish speakers to staff its COVID-19 hotline.

It currently remains unclear how long it will take to vaccinate every adult in the health district and the state.

“One of the things that we’re seeing is that some people who didn’t want [the vaccine] before, are deciding that they do want it now,” Elliott says. 

The CDC reports the current vaccine options are highly effective at preventing people from contracting the virus and developing severe symptoms, and may keep them from spreading the virus to others. The vaccine also offers protection against several super-infectious variant strains.

Per the CDC’s recommendations, it is safe for fully vaccinated people to socialize without a mask with other fully vaccinated people in a private setting. They may also travel domestically and internationally without a pre- or post-travel test (depending on the international destination), and without quarantining after travel.

However, fully vaccinated people should still wear a mask in public and around high-risk people, practice social distancing, wash their hands regularly, and avoid attending large gatherings, says the CDC.

“It’s really important, while we’re all becoming vaccinated, to remember not everyone around us is and that we’re still in this,” says Elliot.

To preregister for the vaccine, visit vaccinate.virginia.gov or call (877)VAX-IN-VA.