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Because of a recent cluster of COVID-19 cases, Lycoming College decided to move to remote learning earlier this week and will remain through the end of this week, according to an announcement on the college's website.
The college's COVID-19 dashboard posted 23 active cases as of Feb. 17. Since the Spring Semester began Jan. 10, the college has had a cumulative total of 55 cases.
"We have not had any kind of community spread," said Charles Edmonds, Executive Vice-President.
"What we have had are two cluster events, which means we've had five in one case and eight cases in another. People that were together socially and not fully following all of the protocols and guidelines which ended up with more spread," he explained.
He added that most of the students in those cases, as with many, were asymptomatic.
"We've really ramped up our testing capacities on campus. In fact, an interesting piece of the story is that we have purchased our own antigen tests," he said.
Edmonds noted that the college administers the tests or the students can self-administer.
"We've set up a whole testing center here and the ability to analyze and run those tests as well on campus, through our microbiology lab," he stated.
"That has given us a much more immediate sense of what's going on, on our campus," he added.
Since the beginning of the semester the college has administered 3, 556 tests.
When students returned in January, the college had instituted what they termed repopulation protocols, which included a delay in in-person instruction, testing for COVID-19, and restrictions on movements and gatherings around the campus. Food service was limited to take-out only.
Some of those protocols are being utilized during the current remote period.
"What we are doing is limiting movement on campus to insure that we have stopped any further transmission or new cases," he said.
Students are attending classes remotely from their rooms and all college sponsored programs and activities have been paused during this time, Edmonds said.
"We as a senior team are meeting regularly to continue to evaluate if there are additional positive cases, if they are connected to the same source or not," he said.
He emphasized that the college is not returning to repopulation protocols because they believe the classrooms are unsafe.
Edmonds added that the college believes and science demonstrates that classrooms are "one of the safest places our students can go and be."
"We haven't had a single transmission that has taken place as a result of the academic program or any class. It is all the other movement that comes along with going to class--on and off campus, some of our commuter students, in our residence halls. Even in terms of meals--we're enabling and bringing and limiting how students get their food and all that stuff to reduce transmission," he stated.
"We're taking these actions proactively," he added
Edmonds asserted that because of the measures the college has taken during the pandemic, through aggressive contract tracing as well a strategy of isolation and quarantine, the rates of transmission and positivity at the school have been lower than any other national, regional or local rates.