Potsdam Campus Community,
As part of the return to campus protocols, please do NOT return to your office/lab until your negative result is confirmed and for residential students, please do not return to campus to move into your hall until your negative result is confirmed from your pre-arrival testing.
We have been notified that six members of our campus community have tested positive for COVID-19 today: three from our return-to-campus testing process and three from off-campus testing centers.
We are now doing contact tracing and precautionary quarantines as a result of three positive cases who resumed normal campus activities after testing and before results were obtained. The other three have not been on campus in the last month. We wish all of them good health.
Please use the daily screening tools* to remain alert about symptoms and other factors that support stopping the spread. Please be diligent to prevention measures such as good hand hygiene and diligent mask wearing. We can rebuild the bubble with these measures.
St. Lawrence County Public Health representatives are notified for each positive test result and will work with each individual. We also report these on our Dashboard and to NYS for its comprehensive reporting on all colleges.
- To respect the privacy of the individuals, they will remain anonymous.
- They will remain quarantined by the St. Lawrence County Public Health Department until officials have cleared them. As part of the NYS protocols in any positive test case, a representative of the St. Lawrence County Public Health Department will notify directly any community members, students, faculty, and staff who may have been exposed and will give further guidance. These contacts will remain confidential. We recognize there may be some delays in their system and our health center/professional staff will support their work.
- Public Health may ask the University for information to support their review and your assistance, if asked to help, is appreciated.
We understand that announcements like this may cause concern in our immediate community. If you have any questions about this communication, please contact clarksonhr@clarkson.edu and/or me.
Thank you for your diligence and commitment to rebuilding the bubble. .
Kelly Chezum, VP for External Relations
Restart Communications Lead
kchezum@clarkson.edu
*These are the daily screening questions (See the footer of every clarkson.edu web page to complete the screening tool!) to keep using and to act up on if you answer yes to any of these.
- Do you currently have a fever (temperature of 100.4 F or greater) without having taken any fever-reducing medications?
- Have you experienced any of the following COVID-19 related symptoms in the past 14 days: cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fever, chills, muscle pain, sore throat, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or new loss of taste or smell?
- Have you tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 14 days, or have you been instructed by a health care professional/public health official/contact tracing app to self-isolate or quarantine?
- Have you knowingly been in close (within 6 feet) or proximate (same enclosed environment, such as an office, but greater than 6 feet) contact with anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19 or who has or had symptoms of COVID-19 within the past 14 days?