Important COVID-19 Updates: Meetings, Visitors, Gatherings and More

COVID-19 Updates Cover

Recently, we’ve been able to relax our COVID-19 guidelines because of the decline in COVID-19 cases in our area and within our system.

As we head into the holiday season, we want to provide updates on our current COVID guidelines.

Meetings and Visitors

• Allowing in-person meetings, tours and gatherings for any Cook Children’s related business purposes only. Please provide a virtual option for employees who are not comfortable attending a live gathering.
• Hochberger Auditorium, all classrooms, meeting rooms and break rooms will return to their normal posted capacity numbers for Cook Children’s sponsored education and meetings that are exclusive to Cook Children’s employee audiences. 
• We urge that outside guest speakers must be vaccinated in order to come on campus. The maximum for these outside attended events is 25 non-employee attendees.
• The only non-Cook Children’s employees allowed onsite must be here for a meeting or for training purposes. Those visitors should be vaccinated and follow our masking guidelines.
• We are not allowing any employee’s family members or friends onsite to visit at this time. We must still limit the number of people on campus as much as possible.
• Allow eating and drinking in meetings and break areas.
• Allow employees to take their masks off while outside and be able to have walking meetings or exercise together outside without masks.
• Allow domestic business travel for work purposes, following all federal guidelines on mask wearing. Continue the pause on international business travel.

Holiday Gatherings and social events

Because of our high employee vaccination and decreased community spread numbers, we are safely resuming holiday small departmental gatherings for staff at this time.

For holiday gatherings, please be mask friendly when planning these events, and use good judgement and caution to provide a safe environment for everyone attending the event.  

Masks

ALL Fully-Vaccinated Employees, who are symptom free and without recent COVID-19 exposures, can now take their masks off while inside any Cook Children’s space where patients and families are not present.

If you are not comfortable with removing your mask, please continue to wear one. This decision, for fully-vaccinated employees, is optional.

Those Who Are Not Fully Vaccinated: You must wear an FDA-approved surgical mask at all times (unless eating or drinking).

Patient and Family Visitation Information:

• At Cook Children’s Medical Center, two designated caregivers may be with each child while they are a patient in the medical center.
• This does not apply to the emergency room or end-of-life situations when more than two individuals may be needed. These situations will be handled on a case-by-case basis.
• All surgery and procedural areas at the medical center and Dodson ASC, including the main OR, surgery waiting areas, etc. will follow the two designated caregivers’ policy in place for the medical center.

At other locations, including Primary Care and Specialty Care offices, such as Dodson and the Infusion Center; Urgent Care Centers; Neighborhood Clinics; Outpatient Surgery Centers in Hurst and Prosper; Rehab; Home Health office, our guidelines are:

• Any two people may come with the patient to any appointments or visits.

Could things change again?

Our COVID-19 Command Center takes into several factors in making these decisions, with your safety as the priority. We will continue to monitor the Tarrant County spread level (currently low) and the number of our employees who are out ill with illness.

Please continue to monitor internal communication channels for the latest updates.

Thank you all for your cooperation to keep everyone safe.