April 14, 2020 Update

Hello, everyone.  Thanks so much for your response to yesterday's update and the Easter egg contest.  We have had over 50 folks enter the contest.  We will leave it open until early afternoon tomorrow, so get your responses in if you want to participate.

So - here are today's updates.

Coronavirus Stats

National:  The CDC reports that there are now 579,005 cases in the US with 22,252 fatalities.

State:

Utah County:  335 total cases, 18 hospitalizations, 3 fatalities

In the News

• Governor Gary Herbert announced today that K-12 public and charter schools in Utah will remain closed through the end of the school year.  So, we will all have even greater appreciation for the public school teachers and administrators in our community.
• BYU will be having online instruction only for Summer Term in addition to the previously announced Spring Term.
• The FDA has just cleared a saliva based coronovirus test that once in production will greatly speed the rate of testing across the country.
  

Provo Social Media

• It is National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week and we really appreciate the staff in our public safety dispatch center.  I can't think of a more stressful and difficult job in our organization than this one.  Thank you for your service and hard work in our behalf.
  
• We have a couple of other activities that we are promoting right now, being sponsored by Parks and Recreation (h/t to Aspen Dalton).  These include:
  
• Social Distancing Trivia Night:
  https://www.facebook.com/events/625329248025898/
  We got over 100 teams to play when we debuted this event last week. So we're doing another one on Monday at 7 PM!
  
  
• Quarantine Classic Car Cruise:
  https://www.facebook.com/events/220453122503075/
  This one has also been attracting a following on social media. We currently have over 100 classic cars committed to drive this Saturday! It should be a great way to safely get out of the house!

Fun Stuff

• Mercer, our employee benefits consultant, has shared a really helpful PDF family fun guide that can help with family activities during the pandemic (and especially now that we are all "home-schooling" for the rest of the year.  You can download the guide at https://bit.ly/2K54WkH.
  
• If you haven't yet see or heard this parody, it seems to me like it hits the perfect note on the challenges we face during this pandemic.  Hope you enjoy it!

Finally - I am taking a vacation day tomorrow - trying to get caught up on some things around my house and yard.  So no daily update tomorrow, but we will be back Thursday with a new and totally cool daily update with the announcement of the winners of our Easter Egg match contest.

Wayne