With the onset of a new COVID-19 variant, we are seeing a frightening rise in Covid-19 cases, including growing hospitalizations and deaths. We need decisive action and communication at the State level to prevent much more avoidable illness and death.

Thankfully, nearly two years into the pandemic, we have a range of public health tools, including vaccines, that can reduce the spread of COVID-19 and enable us to have a safer New Year. Stopping the spread of COVID is essential to the safe and consistent functioning of our schools and businesses.

Please use your voice to support a comprehensive public health approach -- along the lines of the Massachusetts Covid19 Action Plan. Last month, Senator Becca Rausch (D-Needham) and a dozen state legislative colleagues delivered a letter to Governor Baker urging the administration to adopt a slate of data-driven public health policies set forth in a Massachusetts COVID-19 Action Plan, crafted and endorsed by a coalition of over 100 public health and medical professionals and 36 community organizations, to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the Commonwealth.

We need quick action from the Governor and the Legislature.

This includes:

• Funding and staffing daily mobile vaccination clinics in frontline communities and school-based vaccine clinics
• Making testing widely available and distributing free rapid tests
• Implementing a county-based mask mandate according to CDC recommendations
• Providing free high-quality masks, like KF94, KN95, and N95, to frontline communities
• Applying safety standards in the workplace that mitigate aerosol transmission through ventilation
  and/or air filtration, appropriate distancing, and masking
• Applying and enforcing federal and state occupational safety standards and guidelines.
• Protecting against foreclosures, evictions, and rent increases to decrease home crowding using the
  measures in H.1434 and S.89
• Adhering to CDC guidance for universal masking in schools regardless of vaccination status
• Making remote learning options available so infected or ill children do not get left behind.