After spike in cases, classes moved online

Students living on campus strongly urged to stay put

The University of New Haven will move all classes online Tuesday through Saturday following a recent spike in COVID-19 cases at the school.

University President Steven Kaplan announced the schedule change Monday afternoon in a letter to students, noting the decision was made in consultation with the school’s COVID Task Force and public health officials. During this time, only remote education will be conducted and commuter students cannot visit campus for any reason.

Students living on campus are “strongly encouraged to remain on campus, at least until they are tested for COVID-19,” said Kaplan. “Gatherings of any size — instructional or non-instructional — are prohibited until transmission rates decrease.”

As of Monday afternoon, the school’s COVID-19 dashboard showed 13 new positive within the past week, for a total of 113 active student cases.

More than 390 students are quarantining on-campus, and 152 students are quarantining off-campus. Nearly 70 students are isolating on campus, and another 46 are isolating off-campus.

Any residential students who have not been tested since Oct. 5 should also get tested during the week, said the school.

Employees who are able to work remotely should also plan to do so, said the school, and guests continue to be banned from campus. Kaplan said university administrators will “reassess our status” at the end of the week. The university president also said classes will be completely canceled Wednesday, to provide students with a “re-charge” day.

“Most importantly, I want to encourage everyone to be calm, to be smart, and not to panic. The University has spent months preparing for any and all eventualities related to COVID-19,” he said. “We are very confident that the comprehensive actions we are taking — combined with the aggressive measures we have implemented since this spike began within the last week — will quickly and effectively mitigate the spread of COVID-19 on our campus, and enable us to resume on-campus activities in the near future.”

Last week the university began quarantining an entire dorm for students for two weeks after an “unauthorized large-scale gathering” over the previous weekend led to seven new cases of COVID-19 in the school community within 24 hours. Students in Winchester Hall will remain in quarantine until Oct. 20. The university had also reminded students that an increase in cases caused by the “actions of a few” could put the remainder of the semester “at-risk” and threaten on-campus operations.

Trinity College in Hartford made a similar announcement late Saturday, extending its suspension of in-class education until at least Friday because of an increase in COVID-19 cases.