Photo by Victoria Durgin
By Victoria Durgin, Editor in Chief
A total of six cases of COVID-19 were reported by the end of September. All six cases came in the last two weeks of the month.
With those cases also came several quarantine orders for residence halls. The Buenos Aires block of the 18th Street development, West Hall, half of Aikens Hall and the entirety of Reed Hall were all placed on quarantine by the end of September.
Dean of Students and Campus Life Christie Kracker said each quarantine was at the advice of a medical doctor and COVID care coordinator and followed the best available information.
“…we were able to determine the community of impact and only moved those we felt were members of ‘family units’ into quarantine. We did move close contacts to any positive case out of the community and have them in quarantine for 14 days,” Kracker said.
This procedure, according to Kracker, is why some floors are quarantined but not the whole building, such as with Aikens Hall, and why some circumstances prompt the quarantine of the entire building, like in the case of the second quarantine to affect West Hall in September.
“Our decision to move the entire hall to quarantine and do additional testing was to ensure we had addressed all the concerns since we had a detected waste water test. With any detected waste water test we will move a community into quarantine, test the community and then make the next step decision on the results,” said Kracker.
As of 2:11 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 4, all quarantines have been lifted.
In an email to the Susquehanna community on Sept. 30, university President Jonathan Green said he was happy to see cases at such a low number and noted that Susquehanna’s total of six “is one of the best records in higher education.”
Kracker cites the following of guidelines as the reason behind the low case count.
“I think the commitment to follow the guidelines by the faculty/ staff/ students has been the key to the success level,” said Kracker.
The university’s COVID-19 dashboard can be accessed here.
Students and parents with concerns related to the spread of COVID-19 on Susquehanna’s campus can be directed to the Vice President for Student Life Susan Lantz at vpsl@susqu.edu.
