Stony Brook University confirmed its first student case of COVID-19 on campus last week, the university said on its website Friday. The fall semester started on Monday.
The positive case, in a residential student on the university’s west campus, was confirmed as a result of surveillance testing, the university said. The student has been taking online classes exclusively and was asymptomatic, according to the statement posted on the university website.
A cluster of infections at another SUNY campus, Oneonta, led SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras to suspend in-person instruction there for two weeks. Malatras announced the decision yesterday during a conference call with reporters and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
There were about 105 positive COVID-19 tests at the Oneonta campus as of yesterday, Malatras said.
“We have had reports of several large parties of our students at Oneonta last week and unfortunately because of those larger gatherings there were several students who were symptomatic of COVID and upon testing we found that 20 were positive for the COVID virus,” he said. The state deployed a medical team to test all students, he said, resulting in another 85 confirmed cases.
The 105 positives represent about 3% of the total student and faculty population on the Oneonta campus this year. The governor said a 3% infection rate is “a high infection rate in a congregate situation.”
The governor on Thursday announced new guidance requiring colleges with 100 cases or 5% of their on-campus population to suspend in-person instruction for two weeks.
If after two weeks, the local health department finds the college has demonstrated that it cannot contain the number of cases, then they could continue to require remote learning, or impose other mitigation measures in consultation with the State Department of Health, the governor said. During that time, athletic activities and other extracurricular activities must be suspended, and dining hall options must move to take-out only, he said.
“We’ve seen troubling reports of students congregating on college campuses,” Cuomo said Thursday. “We should anticipate clusters and that’s what we’re seeing. Be prepared for it, get ahead of it.”
Cuomo said yesterday he deployed a “SWAT team” to Oneonta to contain the cluster. The team will include 71 contact tracers and eight case investigators, he said.
New York State will also open three free, rapid testing sites in the city of Oneonta, because many students live off-campus, Malatras said. The sites will be open to all city residents by appointment, and results come back in 15 minutes.
Stony Brook University has implemented a many safety protocols for both resident and commuter students.
It is providing wellness screening and on-campus COVID testing, in addition to social distancing measures and mandatory face coverings for everyone on campus.
Stony Brook has also implemented restrictions aimed at preventing large student gatherings. All indoor events are limited to no more than 50 people. Residential students are prohibited from entering each other’s rooms for the first two weeks and after than can have one guest each. Overnight guests and off-campus guests are prohibited. Most in person events have either been canceled or will be held online.
Parking in the largest commuter lot on campus has been cut by more than half to prevent congestion and certain other lots have been opened to commuter parking without charge.
Student behavior when they are not in classes or dorms will determine whether the return to school sparks at outbreak at Stony Brook and any other college campus, Professor Sharon Nachman, chief of the division of pediatric infectious diseases at Stony Brook University Hospital told the student-run Stony Brook Press.
The protective measures are effective only if people adhere to them during non-school hours — at bars and parties, for example, Nachman said.
Resident students were required to provide a negative test result within 14 days of the campus move-in date.
Commuters are required to use the an online health screener daily before going to campus every day. The screener measures temperature and symptoms and students are asked to stay home if they have symptoms.
Only 17% of Stony Brook students are living on campus this semester, compared with 39% in the fall 2019 semester, according to data published on the university’s COVID dashboard. About 81% of all undergraduate students are taking courses online.
Suffolk County Community College classes begin on Wednesday with remote learning and limited in-person classes, mostly for labs and performance classes, the college said.
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