Virus spikes at Trinity

Trinity College extends suspension of in-person classes.

After initially suspending all in-person classes through Monday, Trinity College in Hartford will now stay with online-only classes until at least Friday after the number of active cases of COVID19 more than doubled, according to an email sent late Saturday to students, faculty and staff by school officials.

There are now 45 active cases among the student body — up from 20 last week — appearing on the school’s COVID-19 dashboard. Students who live in off-campus housing make up the majority of new cases. Ten students have returned home to quarantine, and the remainder are being moved into on-campus isolation facilities.

Students whotested positive are “doing well,” the email states, with a small number “reporting mild symptoms.”

Trinity is one of the first Connecticut colleges to suspend in-person fall classes due to the coronavirus pandemic. The most recent spike was first reported in the school newspaper, The Trinity Tripod.

The college requires students to be tested twice a week for the coronavirus, said Jason Rojas, chief of staff and associate vice president for external relations. Results are typically returned within 24 hours.

“Versus other institutions of higher education, we’re sort of an outlier in that,” Rojas said. “We do have a more aggressive testing protocol because we believe surveillance and being able to quickly identify cases is obviously in the best interests of our campus community.”

The campus remains at an orange alert level, which means all classes will be conducted remotely. Athletic facilities remain closed. Students aren’t allowed to gather indoors or outdoors and cannot leave campus for non-essential reasons. Visitations between on-campus and off-campus students is also prohibited.

Students may pick up to-go food at dining halls but cannot eat there. Additional restrictions for Trinity employees and staff remain in place; general office functions that can be completed remotely must remain off campus, with on-campus travel permitted only when necessary to complete a task.

Campus testing centers remain open, and and regular testing protocols for students remain in place. Trinity has conducted more than 26,000 student COVID tests since August, with 72 showing positive results.

Rojas added that there were no specific parties or gatherings reported to campus safety that may have resulted in a spike in positive cases. “We’re just trying to limit gatherings of all kinds as we continue to look at our testing

data,” he said. “We’re asking people to just restrain from getting together as we manage the increase in cases.”

There is no clear threshold of positive cases that requires moving the campus to red, the most restrictive alert level, and for students to leave campus entirely, though Rojas said it would be based on a number of data points, including active cases, positivity rates, what’s happening in the Hartford community and the number of available hospital beds.

“We’re basing it on the data that we collect,” Rojas said. “We base it on the conversations that we have with infectious disease experts at Hartford Healthcare, with our own health care staff. So there’s really no set threshold that I could point somebody to.”