The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
SHU bans some students from campus amid COVID spike
FAIRFIELD — Sacred Heart University said students who live off-campus in Bridgeport will be required to take classes from home, amid a spike in new cases of COVID-19.
The school said the decision was made after 10 cases of the coronavirus were found among students living off-campus in Bridgeport.
Some 2,500 students live off-campus throughout the surrounding communities, according to the university.
Altogether, 26 SHU students have tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of August, according to the school’s database.
Sacred Heart said none of its cases are on-campus.
The spike comes as the state as a whole continues to see low COVID-19 numbers, with Friday’s report showing 156 new cases out of 19,431 tests — a rate of 0.8 percent. The report had zero new deaths for the day, leaving the total at 4,468 fatalities since March, and the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 stood at 58 on Friday.
The bump of cases among college students prompted the state Department of Public Health to issue an alert for all of Connecticut ahead of the Labor Day weekend.
Acting Commissioner Deidre Gifford said small gatherings are a “major source of infection.”
“In the past several weeks in Connecticut, we are seeing small gatherings of friends and family leading to COVID-19 infection,” the commissioner said in a prepared statement Friday. “If you are getting together with anyone who doesn’t live with you, please wear your mask, maintain social distance, wash your hands frequently, and use hand sanitizer.”
At Sacred Heart, 16 of the 26 students tested positive before school started and are not allowed to come to campus until they have recovered, according to the school’s dashboard.
Six students tested positive on Wednesday alone, according to the university. School officials say the spike will likely lead to more than the 10 cases already reported.
“Because of a recent spike in positive COVID-19 cases among students who live in Bridgeport, the university has made the difficult, but necessary decision to require off-campus students living in Bridgeport to take all classes from home and not to come on campus until further notice,” the university said in a statement posted to its website Thursday.
Deborah Noack, SHU executive director of communications, said the school suspects the cases in Bridgeport could be related to a party or gathering, but declined to elaborate, citing privacy concerns.
The ban does not apply to students who live in Sacred Heart housing in Bridgeport.
It also does not apply to students who live with their families in single-family homes without other Sacred Heart students, and it does not include university staff and faculty who live in Bridgeport.
Students who violate the order will be suspended for 30 days, the school said.
University officials said the decision to allow Bridgeport students back on campus will be made over the holiday weekend, and the school hopes to have students back on campus early next week.
“This is how it’s going to work when we have cases — we’re going to shut down and assess the situation,” she said, noting that the school took similar steps when Danbury experienced a spike of COVID-19 infections last month, banning students and staff from campus who live in that city.
“We need as much as possible to keep this from spreading off of campus, which would shut us down completely,” she added. “We’re doing everything we can to prevent that from happening.”
SHU plans to test a group of students living off campus over the weekend as part of its decision to allow the Bridgeport students back on campus, university officials said.
The school has raised its alert level to yellow, which means areas with higher cases will go to online-only learning, rather than a mix of in-person and online instruction. The heightened alert also means more restrictions on the number of people who can attend events.
Visitors are not allowed in residential buildings, and parents and family members can only visit outdoors, according to the university.
The school said contact tracers are working to determine who was in touch with the 10 cases among off-campus students.
“We know you miss socializing with your friends, having parties and going on outings. And, we know that it is not easy to be told to study from home,” the school said in a statement on its website.
“But as with the spike in Danbury and now this flareup in Bridgeport, we need to be highly cautious and proactive in our decisions. We all want the same thing — to finish this semester on campus,” the statement said.
The alert came as the University of Connecticut reported four new cases among residential students on its Storrs campus Friday, and one new case among commuter students at the campus.
The school has 67 active cases on campus. Fortyseven other students have recovered after testing positive at Storrs.