Western Connecticut State University officials are working overtime to coordinate an accelerated response to the threat of coronavirus after Connecticut’s first confirmed case was announced early Friday night. The individual infected works as a nurse at Norwalk Hospital and at Danbury Hospital, less than a mile from WCSU’s Midtown Campus. 

“I was in the middle of a fire alarm when the news broke,” Claire Greene, a senior from the Justice & Law Department and Resident Assistant in Pinney Hall, said. “Immediately I was very concerned because of everything I’ve heard on the news about coronavirus.” With Greene were a few dozen residents gathered on the patio outside Pinney Hall. They were waiting out the fire department’s response to a smoke alarm triggered by an overfilled dryer when everyone’s phones began to ping with news alerts. Quickly, gripes about standing in the cold transformed to nervous chatter. In minutes, screenshots of coverage from NBC and the Hartford Courant were posted in group chats across campus. 

“It’s concerning,” Greene told the Echo: “I’m worried about our campus, and I’m worried about everyone else, but I have faith that WestConn will try to do right by us and make the decisions that are necessary.” 

At WCSU, an ad-hoc team coordinated Saturday to respond to Connecticut’s first confirmed case of novel coronavirus COVID-19. At 9:31pm after a press conference hosted by Governor Lamont, Department of Public Heath Commissioner Renee Coleman-Mitchell, and Mayor Mark Boughton at Danbury City Hall, the administration sent the following message to all students and faculty through the university’s Everbridge Emergency Notification System: 

“The university is aware that a Coronavirus patient has been identified in Danbury. We are working to understand how this may affect WCSU Operations and we will communicate regularly.”

In an update distributed Saturday evening, WCSU’s Emergency Response team more thoroughly addressed student and staff concerns about the first confirmed case at Danbury Hospital. The update laid out one major change to policy since communications from Provost Missy Alexander and VP of Student Affairs Keith Betts were sent to all students and faculty earlier in the week: clinical hours for nursing students at hospitals across Connecticut are canceled through spring break, and student nurses may be removed from hospitals for the remainder of spring semester.

Additionally, the update emphasized campus forums planned for the coming week, announced additional training to be provided to professors on the mechanics of digitizing their courses should it be required, and clarified that the university will make accommodations for students, faculty, and staff who must miss class or work to self-monitor symptoms. 

“Any member of the campus community who has flu-like symptoms should stay home,” the update from the university read. “Students should notify their professors and arrange a plan to keep up with their assignments. Likewise, faculty members should contact their department chairperson and/or dean in order to make arrangements for instruction to continue.” 

In an interview on Wednesday, Paul Steinmetz, WCSU’s Director of Community Relations, reiterated to the Echo that attendance and absence policies will be relaxed as the university addresses coronavirus risk: if students communicate with their professors, they will not be marked “stopped attending” for extended absences due to self-isolation for flu-like symptoms.  

The update states that Nuvance Health, the health system that operates both Norwalk Hospital and Danbury Hospital where the individual infected with coronavirus works, has reported that no WCSU nursing students worked with or were exposed to the infected nurse. According to Governor Lamont, Danbury and Norwalk hospital staff who came in direct contact with the nurse have been furloughed and are being monitored for the next 14 days for symptoms. Representatives for Nuvance Health could not be reached for comment by publication. 

WCSU is collaborating with state organizations dedicated to nursing education to prepare alternatives for hospital hours for nursing students should they have to be pulled from in-hospital training for the semester. For now, nursing students will not work any clinical hours at hospitals through the end of spring break (ending on Sunday, March 22) as CSCU evaluates program risk. 

“All I know is it’s hard to outright cancel clinicals because we are required as a program to complete the amount of hours we said we would,” Catherine Reyes, a nursing major who works her clinical hours at Waterbury Hospital, said. “I don’t mind online classes, but it might screw us over because we won’t be meeting the standards.” 

The University’s rapid response team is also communicating with representatives of K12 schools where education students do classroom hours, and with colleges and universities hosting student-athletes for out of state games. 

Next week, WCSU will start rolling out training to prepare professors for the possibility of moving courses online. Some professors have already made the jump; in the Macricostas School of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Ed Hagan announced to students in his “Writing About Human Tragedy” course on Friday that he was moving his classes online via the conferencing software Webex for the remainder of Spring semester.