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FRAMINGHAM – Framingham Department of Public Works has 3 employees positive for COVID-19 and 15 additional employees under quarantine, confirmed Framingham DPW Director Blake Lukis.

On November 2, SOURCE reported a member of the Framingham Public School District’s maintenance staff tested positive for COVID and 9 of the 11-member maintenance division was under a 14-day quarantine.

“Last week we had 3 individuals test positive for Covid-19.  These 3 positives resulted in 15 employees requiring to be out for a 14 day quarantine,” said Lukis to the digital news outlet today, November 11.

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“We have strategically set up our operation into separate crews, as maintaining 6 feet while performing many of our operations cannot be achieved.  These crews allow us to provide continued operation by reducing the ability for any one individual testing positive taking out more than their crew,” said Lukis.

Framingham Public Schools had to hire outside contractors to complete work with 80% of its maintenance division under a 14-day quarantine.

The DPW Director said the “quarantine reduces the amount of work that we are able to perform in a given day, but has not impacted our essential operations.”

Lukis said his division has the “staff needed to complete our essential operations.”

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The DPW director told the news outlet “we did have to utilize our on-call contractor to make an emergency infrastructure repair as our other crews were not able to break away from the work they were performing.”

Each of the DPW employees on “quarantine will return on the 15th day after their close contact with the known positive,” said Lukis.

Framingham had been a high-risk or red community for the coronavirus for nine consecutive weeks, dating back to late August.

On Friday, under the state’s new metrics, the City of Framingham became a “yellow” community.

Despite the yellow designation, the City of Framingham cases has increased from 11 per day per 100,000 people when last red to 15.6 cases per day per 100,000 cases last Friday.

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The state’s new rating comes out Friday, November 13.

On Monday, Framingham reported 80 new cases and the City of Framingham has had more than 200 new cases since Halloween weekend.

There are 267 active cases of Framingham residents and 187 Framingham residents in quarantine as of today, November 11.

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By editor

Susan Petroni is the former editor for SOURCE. She is the founder of the former news site, which as of May 1, 2023, is now a self-publishing community bulletin board. The website no longer has a journalist but a webmaster.