UPDATE: The Oswego County Health Department announced today, Sept. 12 that an additional 43 members of the SUNY Oswego community have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, bringing the total number to 126. The individuals have been placed in isolation. More information can be found here.
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OSWEGO – As SUNY Oswego’s COVID-19 cases rise, the college is increasing its efforts to prevent and contain the virus.
The New York State Department of Health’s guidance states that colleges and universities must transition all in-person learning to remote, when 100 members of the on-campus population – inclusive of students, faculty, and staff – test positive for COVID-19 within a 14-day period. According to this guidance, only active cases at SUNY Oswego that are characterized as on-campus would count toward the 100 metric.
According to the state guidance, “After the 14-day period, the local health department(s) where the higher education institution is located shall evaluate the institution’s efforts to contain COVID-19 transmission at such location. If the local health department(s), in consultation with DOH, determines that the institution has demonstrated that community spread of COVID-19 has been effectively contained, the location shall be authorized to reopen for in-person learning.
However, if after the 14-day period, the institution has not demonstrated that community spread of COVID-19 has been contained at such location, the local health department(s), in consultation with DOH, may require a continued suspension of in-person learning (i.e., an extended period of remote learning) and/or further mitigation measures by the institution.
If at any time a cluster or clusters of positive COVID-19 cases develop at an area of a higher education institution location (e.g., a dormitory or residence hall) and such cluster(s) exceed the institution’s ability to contact trace, quarantine, or isolate, the local health department, in consultation with DOH, may require the institution to transition all in-person learning to remote format(s) and limit on-campus activities, even if the location may have fewer than 100 individuals or less than 5% of the total on-campus population who have tested positive for COVID-19 over a 14- day period.”
As of yesterday, September 11, the college had 82 active cases on-campus out of the 100 threshold for the August 28 to September 11 two-week period.
The numbers report from yesterday is below:
- Total number of tests: 6,311 (Thursday: 6,290)
- Total number of cumulative confirmed cases since Aug. 12: 96
- Total number of active confirmed cases Aug. 28 to Sept. 11: 93 (Thursday: 75)
- students living on-campus: 59 (Thursday: 51)
- students living off-campus while taking classes on-campus: 23 (Thursday: 15)
- employees working on-campus: 0 (Thursday: 0)
- students living off-campus learning remotely: 11 (Thursday: 9)
- employees working remotely: 0 (Thursday: 0)
- Total number of students in on-campus quarantine: 63 (Thursday: 64)
- Total number of students in on-campus isolation: 55 (Thursday: 49)
- Total number of recoveries: 6 (Thursday: 3)
SUNY Oswego President Deborah Stanley sent out the following message with details in what the college is doing now:
SUNY Oswego is taking several immediate and significant actions to mitigate the spread of the virus both on and off campus. We have seen an upward trend in our positive cases of COVID-19 (see SUNY Oswego COVID-19 dashboard), and we are moving swiftly to institute new measures to protect the members of our campus and the neighboring community of Oswego.
In the last two days we have more than doubled the available quarantine and isolation rooms by re-opening the newly renovated Funnelle Hall and increasing the total quarantine rooms to 208 and isolation rooms to 144 (total of 352 rooms). Currently 63 of the total 208 designated quarantine rooms are in use; while 55 of the total 144 designated isolation rooms are occupied.
We are mobilizing a new and expanded surveillance testing operation in a heightened effort to identify COVID-19 on our campus. A dedicated testing center is being prepared in Lee Hall next week and will be staffed with additional medical professionals to assist with our COVID testing. Our proactive plan is to operate our testing center on a regular basis throughout the week, including weekends and evenings for the remainder of the semester to make saliva testing available for SUNY Oswego students and employees who may have come into contact with a positive or suspected positive case or who simply wish to be tested.
Such continued aggressive testing, in addition to implementing wastewater testing of SUNY Oswego’s 12 residence halls, will also allow us to collect data that may become important to our campus as well as local and state health departments in planning the coming weeks and months.
Oswego staff and administration, and University Police are working closely with the City of Oswego, Mayor Billy Barlow’s office and the City of Oswego Police Department on outreach, care and enforcement of the off-campus student population.
“President Stanley and her cabinet have been great partners, working with the City on proactive education and enforcement, and being transparent in our shared community’s fight against the pandemic,” Barlow said. “We will continue to work together with the health of the entire Oswego community as our priority.”
In another significant move to reduce spread, SUNY Oswego has also paused all athletics activity including team meetings and workouts for at least 14 days. The campus has undertaken a pervasive social norming effort with outdoor kiosks, posters, digital signs and more to continue to stress the importance of self-quarantining if you are not feeling well, washing your hands, wearing your mask, socially distancing, limiting travel, and refraining from hosting or attending parties or large gatherings.
We remind the entire campus community that we are #TogetherOz and that our actions are critical to the safety of everyone in our community.
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Send them home. We don’t need this in our community now.
Just raise the tuition of the idiots who keep violating the rules. It isn’t hard to figure out they are the ones who are testing positive. Charge them for food delivery and the extra resources. You don’t need a vaccine to fix stupid people only respond to drastic measures. Besides when the genius in charge of NYS points out you need 100 cases to shut down a college what do you honestly think college kids are going to do.