Please Note: If you, a member of your team, or a visitor to your company has been presumed positive or has been diagnosed with COVID-19, and has been to a CIC location, please notify us immediately at covid@cic.com.
DEAR CIC MIAMI COMMUNITY,
First of all, we truly hope that you, your teams, and your families are well in this moment of uncertainty.
Secondly, as all of you know, Governor DeSantis has mandated a 30-day stay-at-home notice across the state, in addition to the mandates already established by the City of Miami and Miami-Dade County.
As we shared in previous communications, while we are closed for normal business, we are operating as an “essential” / “life-sustaining” business under these regulations, and are supporting clients needing to pursue essential business in our facilities, particularly our laboratories. We recognize your work can be critical, but we encourage everyone to observe our local and state restrictions.
MASKS & GLOVES
In response to emerging public health views about how the virus is transmitted, the CDC rolled out new recommendations about masks to address COVID-19. Although we will continue to function with very limited staff onsite, we are asking that every CIC team member wear gloves and a mask when entering/exiting the building or in the common areas, effective last week. In line with this, we are also asking that if you need to access CIC Miami for any reason (your company is an essential business, you are picking up mail, you are collecting something from your office), you also wear a mask and gloves around the space.
Countries with high public use of face coverings, such as Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan have seen dramatically reduced spread of the disease. This new protocol is part of our goal to ensure that no-one contracts COVID in a CIC facility, and is for your safety.
To be clear, the aforementioned masks are non-medical cotton masks and not the type that is in short supply and which are needed by healthcare workers. These masks are readily available today, and we are not competing with hospitals for them. You can also make them at home with materials you already have on hand (any fabric, for example).
As for gloves, we recommend using reusable, washable gloves that you may already own. That said, there is no suggestion we have read in the press that suggests gloves are in short supply, especially since you can use any kind of glove. Some companies have also been able to procure gloves on Amazon (example here).
We have set up some latex gloves in the wellness stations on the 3rd and 6th floors, as well as the mail room, should you need them. We will also be receiving some non-surgical masks soon, and will place them in the wellness stations for your use.
HAVE YOU SEEN OUR NEW COVID-19 RESOURCES PAGE?
Additionally, in an effort to continue supporting you and our community as we are all adjusting to this “new normal,” we at CIC have put together this COVID-19 Aid Resources page. Seeking relief funding, learning opportunities, guides, webinars, and more amid the rapidly-changing legislation and news around COVID-19? You’ll find all that and other information on the page, for both the state and national level. You’re not alone in this — we’re here for you.
OTHER RESOURCES & VIRTUAL PROGRAMMING
To provide you more even more support and information, here are other items that may be of interest to you:
1. As clients, you may already be receiving our weekly community newsletter. Our newsletters have been updated in look and feel, and will feature helpful content surrounding COVID-19 updates and virtual opportunities. This weekly email with resources for you —virtual events, funding opportunities, articles, you name it — will typically be sent on Tuesdays, moving forward. Keep an eye out for it. We hope you will find these useful, personally and professionally.
2. Along with the aforementioned resource page and weekly newsletter, you can also find more comprehensive information on our CIC Miami calendar, with details about virtual events that are updated on a regular basis.
3. Interested specifically in CIC’s current community programming? Our programming is now virtual! The office hours, lunch and learns, and other interactive opportunities you love are still available to you, even as you work from home. The topics on these items will also focus on information that will be helpful to you during this COVID-19 time. Email programming@miami.cic.com to be added to future weekly programming Wednesday updates.
4. If you’d like to sign up for other updates, you can click this page and use the form below. We have an external newsletter that goes out to our local community (outside of CIC’s client community) you can subscribe to, if interested. However as a note, you may typically find the same information in our weekly internal newsletter.
See a good opportunity or a piece of content that you think is worth sharing with our fellow community members? Please send it our way at helpmemiami@cic.com.
And one more note…
Our CIC 2019 Global Impact Report is out!
We wondered if now would be time to release the report, but we decided that, yes, this is a time to reflect on why we do what we do. 2019 marked 20 years of innovation for us as a company, yet our mission remains the same: We support innovators as they solve the world’s pressing challenges.
As we enter a new decade continuing to energize our communities with this innovative spirit, we thank everyone who’s been a part of the journey — partners, investors, specialists, mentors, friends…and especially you. We hope that as many of you are working from home (including us) in a shared effort to flatten the curve and reduce the overload in our healthcare system, that the good news of innovation and progress warms and encourages you with the reminder that together we can achieve more.
As always, we are here for you and your companies and organizations. While we may not know how long we will have to adapt to these rapid changes, our CIC Miami community spirit of innovation and connection is not limited to the walls of a building — without a doubt, we will get through this together.
Let’s press on,
Natalia Martinez-Kalinina
General Manager/Latin America Lead
