Conn’s COVID-19 response featured in U.S. News and Inside Higher Ed

Thanks to frequent testing and effective contact tracing, Conn has been recognized as a national success story in the fight to prevent a COVID-19 outbreak on campus.  

An article in Inside Higher Ed highlights Connecticut College as one of only seven institutions singled out for pandemic response efforts that led to low infection rates and the ability to hold in-person classes and athletic training safely.

The successful outcome of the fall semester is due in part to Conn’s twice-weekly testing and contact-tracing regimen—an aggressive program that operated at a larger scale than those at most schools and that was able to arrest the spread of isolated instances of infection before they led to an outbreak.

“It just became part of everybody’s week to go down to the testing center twice a week,” said Dean of Students Victor Arcelus. “That allowed everyone to be able to do what they did over the course of semester. Knowing what the positivity rate was on our campus at any given time, it enabled us to hold in-person classes, it enabled us to have student clubs. Our varsity athletes were able to engage in in-person training, and ultimately we were able to do some inter-squad scrimmages.”

Conn’s COVID response was also mentioned in a recent U.S. News and World Report piece that can be found here.