Big COVID on campus
Mass quarantine after outbreaks at local colleges
Merrimack College is the latest Massachusetts college to face a coronavirus cluster after students returned to campus for the fall semester, triggering more than 250 students to quarantine this week.
Meanwhile, Emerson College’s dining center was temporarily shut down on Wednesday after three members of the vendor staff tested positive for the virus.
At Merrimack College’s North Andover campus, 17 students in the same dorm have tested positive for the virus in the last week. The COVID-19 cluster at Monican
Hall has caused the college to quarantine more than 250 students who live in the dorm.
“The College considers the number of positive cases in Monican Hall concerning, and is moving aggressively through its protocols of contact tracing, isolation and quarantining to minimize the effect on the campus and community,” college officials wrote to the campus community.
All 266 Monican Hall residents are in isolation or quarantine.
More than 250 of the students are in isolation or quarantine off of the campus, which is the college’s
COVID-19 policy. The remaining Monican Hall residents who are quarantining or isolating on campus are in campus-designated quarantine spaces.
“Monican is empty and it will be systematically and professionally cleaned and disinfected before anyone moves back in,” the college officials wrote.
“We want to thank all the Monican students and their parents for their patience and diligence in moving off of the campus this morning by implementing their predetermined departure plans so quickly and acting to protect others,” they added.
But Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday said it’s not smart for colleges to send students home if there’s an outbreak.
Colleges should plan to house students who’ve been exposed to the coronavirus in a separate dorm, Fauci told senators.
“But do not send them home to their community,” Fauci said, “because of the likelihood of them reseeding infection in a community.”
At Emerson College in Boston, three vendor employees have recently tested positive for the virus, which caused the college to close its dining center for breakfast on Wednesday.
“The Dining Center will continue to follow its routine cleaning maintenance schedule of cleaning three times a day, in the morning, afternoon, and overnight,” the college said in a statement.
After the first vendor employee tested positive, the Lion’s Den was “promptly disinfected and sanitized, closed over the weekend, and remains closed out of an abundance of caution and in accordance with guidance from city health officials.”