PC temporarily moves to full online learning; 120 students test positive for COVID-19

Updated at 1:23 on Sept. 18, 2020.

PROVIDENCE COLLEGE has temporarily moved all instruction to online and requires all students to stay either on campus or at home at all times due to a spate of positive COVID-19 results among students. / COURTESY PROVIDENCE COLLEGE
PROVIDENCE COLLEGE has temporarily moved all instruction to online and requires all students to stay either on campus or at home at all times due to a spate of positive COVID-19 results among students. / COURTESY PROVIDENCE COLLEGE

PROVIDENCE – Providence College has shifted to remote learning until at least next weekend after roughly 120 students, most of them residing off campus, tested positive for COVID-19.

The school has ordered all students, both on campus and off, to stay home.

The move, announced late Thursday, follows up PC’s decision Tuesday to have only students who live off campus take classes online until further notice unless they show a negative COVID-19 test after 17 cases were identified at the time, mostly from students who do not live at PC.

However, PC identified 67 additional cases Wednesday when the school performed 1,101 tests, according to the college’s COVID-19 data portal. The positive test rate the last two days at PC was 5.5%.

- Advertisement -

R.I. Department of Health later announced Friday, after PC’s decision to move to online learning, that the case count over the last three days has grown to approximately 120. Along with working with PC to support students in quarantine and isolation, RIDOH also said people who live around PC to monitor their health and should contact a health care provider if symptoms develop.

“Food will continue to be delivered. Those [students] who chose the PC Cash option will continue to have that option available to them,” PC President Rev. Kenneth R. Sicard said in an email to the community. “There must be no indoor or outdoor gatherings of any kind. There must be no travel whatsoever to bars, restaurants, clubs, or neighborhood businesses.”

As a result, PC has altered its instruction protocol to being fully online starting Friday until at least Sept. 26. During which time on-campus students cannot leave campus. Off-campus students cannot leave their apartments and have no travel “whatsoever,” PC said.

Off-campus students who have tested positive or in close contact with someone who has “must be relocated,” per order of R.I. Department of Health, Sicard said.

“Those who are able to return home should do so. All others will be relocated to either a campus facility or hotel room,” he said.

PC spokesperson Steven Maurano told Providence Business News Friday that all students who were in close contact of those students who tested positive have to quarantine and the college’s contact tracing team is currently calling all of the close contacts. Given the number of positive cases, the number of close contacts PC has to call could be substantially high.

“We’ve had 84 students test positive the last couple of days. If each one of them has eight to 10 close contacts, that’s 800-plus people we have to call,” Maurano said. “Until we can get in touch with all of these close contacts, we’re acting out of an abundance of caution [to go to fully online and having everyone stay home].”

Students who don’t stay home or on campus will face “immediate interim suspensions” from the college, Sicard said. College staff, along with the Providence Police Department and private security, will monitor off-campus houses with PC students “on a 24/7 basis.”

Additionally, students who would normally be student teaching, doing internships or clinical placements must do it remotely, Sicard said.

It’s also a possibility that online instruction could extend beyond Sept. 26, Maurano said. He noted other colleges, such as the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., that went to a two-week remote-learning period to control the virus and PC could do the same “but we’re not there yet.”

Sicard also issued a warning that on-campus life for the rest of the fall semester is at risk. He said the college used “virtually every tool” at the school’s disposal with the recent actions PC took and the college is “out of options.”

“If we are not successful, we will have no alternative other than to shut down our campus for the remainder of the fall semester,” Sicard said, also noting that a campus shutdown would affect PC’s ability to reopen for in-person learning in the spring semester.

Sicard also said the strategies have worked at other colleges and PC has a “fighting chance” to get through it. But, Sicard said, it will take “commitment and discipline on the part of everyone” at PC.

To date, PC has identified 107 total cases – of which all but one are students – out of 12,523 total tests, a 0.08% positive rate, according to the college’s data portal. Full details of test results for Thursday were not available on the portal as of Friday afternoon.

In a statement Friday, Providence City Councilor David A. Salvatore asked area residents, unless they’re PC employees, to refrain from walking PC’s campus grounds as recreation for the time being in order to limit virus spread. He also noted that he drove down Eaton Street Friday morning and saw several plastic cups and beer cans littered on the road, giving the perception there were parties and congregating, “even as 80 of their classmates are fighting the virus.”

“This behavior is unacceptable and needs to stop immediately,” Salvatore said.

“Many college students need to remember that they are guests in the City of Providence during the years they are in school here,” Salvatore said. “Students just like anyone else that chooses to flaunt the rules promulgated by [Gov. Gina M.] Raimondo and Director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, Dr. [Nicole] Alexander-Scott, need to be held accountable for their behavior.”

Salvatore also applauded PC for its “quick action” to manage the pandemic on campus.

James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.

This story has been updated to include comment from Providence City Councilor David A. Salvatore, as well as an update from the R.I. Department of Health.

No posts to display