Beverly Mayor: 'Please Stay Home This Holiday Season'

BEVERLY, MA — Beverly Mayor Mike Cahill urged residents to celebrate small amid the coronavirus health crisis in a message to the community ahead of Christmas.

Noting "our hospitals are again filling up with people sick with COVID-19 and other illnesses," Cahill acknowledged all the sacrifices residents have already made over the past 10 months, but added "now, in the middle of the holiday season, we all each need to do a little more."

Cahill asked residents to resist visiting friends and extended family around the holidays and not to rely on a negative coronavirus test as an assurance that a person is not infected.

"What a negative test means is that at the moment the sample was taken from your nose, you tested negative," he said. "It is possible for anyone testing negative, that they do have the virus in them — it just hasn't yet taken hold enough to register on the test, but it will and they will become contagious. So please keep all your loved ones safe this year — and let's all hope there will be more occasions after COVID for you to celebrate together."

He added that there are many resources available for those having a particularly difficult time this year due to worries and isolation. Important crisis numbers are posted on the city's website.

And there is a big storm coming.

"Please track the forecast, be sure your cell phones are charged, flashlights are at the ready, and, if possible, your gutters and rain spouts are cleared," he said.

Cahill concluded: "I fully understand that we keep being asked again and again to make sacrifices and that none of this is easy. Thank you again for everything you do. Please be kind to yourself and to your neighbors.

"I am confident that we in Beverly are going to do what we need to do, and we will get through this together."