On Friday, Johnson and Wales reported 31 students, most living off-campus, had tested positive for COVID-19. By Monday, that number had climbed to 38. Many of the students live in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Providence, where more than 200 Providence College students tested positive for the virus in September.
Johnson and Wales officials announced Monday, all in-person classes would switch to virtual lessons this week. Some culinary arts labs will remain open until Wednesday to allow students to finish in-person projects, school officials said.
Like Providence College last month, Johnson and Wales also issued a stay at home order for students both on and off-campus. Additionally, the school will begin testing every student Wednesday.
“We just wanted to take a pause, get a baseline of the campus health and determine if we have some challenges,” Johnson and Wales President Marie Bernardo-Sousa said Monday. “And if we do have those challenges, let’s mitigate them and address them as quickly as possible.”
School officials said contact tracing following the spike, has not shown the spate of positive tests are the result of any large gatherings, or other flouting of COVID-19 regulations. Instead, officials believe students have simply interacted with too many peers over the first weeks of the semester.
“They’re living their lives in small groups, but those small groups are all exposed to different individuals,” Bernardo-Sousa said. “It’s hard to say ‘well I’m only seeing these five people’ particularly at this age, because there’s so much connectivity with all of our students.”
The mandatory testing is expected to take about two weeks, during which time students will remain under the stay-at-home order. School officials say they will use the testing data to make a decision about any possible return to in-person learning, though declined to provide any specific threshold that would serve as a green light.
“We’re working with the Department of Health on that number, but the preference is to see a very, very low positivity rate,” said Bernardo-Soulsa.
At Providence College where students this week entered their third week living under lock-down, officials are preparing to restart in-person classes.
A spike in cases last month forced the school to close and quarantine or isolate more than 400 students. But the Department of Health has now cleared the college to begin preparing for a return to regular classes. Over the last week, PC reported 27 new cases among students.
“We anticipate the full resumption of in-person classes on Oct. 12,” Providence College officials wrote in a statement released to students and staff Saturday.
“We hope to resume some of the in-person classes Thursday,” said PC Executive Vice President Ann Manchester-Molak Monday, “But that remains to be seen.”
Between October 4th and 6th, the college plans to test every student again. Students who left the state during the lockdown will be required to provide proof of a negative test from their home, and take a second test in Providence.
School officials say the positivity rate for the latest cohort of testing must be below two percent for in-person courses to resume.
“Whatever data we confront Wednesday will help direct these efforts,” Manchester-Molak said. “[The Health Department] might say ‘why don’t you hold off a couple more days.’ That might very well be the upshot of all this.”
Similar to Johnson and Wales, Providence College officials say students have not been breaking COVID-19 guidance, including the 15-person social gathering limit. Instead, students have allowed their small groups to mingle, to such an extent that the virus spread across the campus.
“I think this is where things might have gone a little astray,” Manchester-Molak said.
“Even though [students] might have been within the group of only fifteen, and they’re being socially distant, they might not be realizing that Venn diagram of overlay and how these cases just kind of push into another dorm, to another dorm, to another off campus house.”
She said if in-person classes resume, school officials plan to strictly enforce guidance limiting gatherings to what Manchester-Molak calls “pods.”
“A pod is really your roommates,” she said. “And kind of stick to that pod, as much as you can.”
In the midst of the lock-down, several Providence College students wondered whether the school could adequately handle the pandemic, or if another spike in cases would not be inevitable should in-person classes resume.
“When it becomes untenable is when the positivity rate is such that it becomes an unmanageable situation for us,” Manchester-Molak said.
“That means all of the services that go along with quarantining, isolating, all the things that we’ve been doing, to quell the outbreak, are getting overtaxed.”
At this point, school officials are still hoping to finish out the semester in-person.
This post was updated at 8:30pm Oct. 5
