The College has learned that two additional students – one who lives on campus, and one who lives off campus – have tested positive for COVID-19.
Both students are known close contacts of previously reported positive cases and had been in quarantine prior to receiving these test results. The off-campus student has not been on campus since March.
The Student Health Service will monitor these students’ health, and they will remain in isolation until cleared by Student Health Service (generally 14 days post-exposure or 10 days from onset of symptoms, per CDC guidelines).
According to the College’s Testing and Quarantine procedure for fall 2020, contact tracers have already been deployed to interview the students who tested positive about where they have been and with whom they have been in contact. Contact tracers will notify other individuals as appropriate, and will also notify Facilities Management if the students have been in common spaces on campus within the last seven days.
All of the faculty teaching courses in which students who test positive for COVID-19 are enrolled will be notified, whether those courses are in-person, remote or hybrid.
Students and instructors who share in-person courses (if any) with those who test positive will be notified but will not be required to quarantine unless contact tracers confirm that they have been in close contact (10 minutes or more within six feet) without wearing a mask.
This is in accordance with current SUNY, state and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance that quarantine is necessary only in cases when a person has been without a mask and has spent more than 10 minutes within six feet of an infected person.
The Student Health Service has notified state and local health departments, per state requirements.
A total of 10 students have tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of the fall 2020 semester. Only eight of these students had been on campus during the 14 days prior to receiving their positive test result. Seven are currently classified as active cases (defined as confirmed positive tests among individuals who have been on campus and may have exposed others). One student has recovered and is no longer counted among active cases. Eleven students are in quarantine on campus, and eight more are in isolation on campus.
The College has not received reports of any employees testing positive since the semester began.
As previously announced, the College will continue reporting new positive cases of COVID-19 to community members through the Daily Digest e-newsletter. Each issue of the Digest will include a “Coronavirus Update” announcing new, confirmed positive cases among students or employees, if any.
Our community can also stay up-to-date on this information via our COVID-19 dashboard, which includes tallies of current active cases, total cases last week, total recoveries, data on on-campus student testing and positivity rates for those on-campus tests, and information about students quarantining and isolating on campus.
The dashboard does not include counts of positive cases among students taking online courses from home, or employees who are telecommuting and not coming to campus, as any such cases should not pose an on-campus health risk.
Use this link for more details about our coronavirus communication protocol for fall 2020.
We remind members of our community that the CDC has advised that there is “No Identifiable Risk” to an individual who walks by or briefly shares a room with a COVID-19-positive individual. That guidance can be found in Table 1 of the CDC’s interim guidance for risk assessment related to perceived levels of exposure.
Campus leadership is continuing to monitor developments related to COVID-19 with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and our local and state health departments, as well as SUNY System Administration and the Governor’s Office.
