On Friday, Queen’s University issued a statement confirming a widespread outbreak of COVID-19 within its student community.
The outbreak comes as Queen’s today confirmed several suspected cases of the new variant of Omicron within the community.
The university now says it is working with public health to address the current situation. They also ask students to take immediate action to prevent further spread of the virus. “If you’ve been in close contact with a known case for the past ten days or have any symptoms, you need to isolate yourself and get tested as soon as possible with a PCR test. Tests can be booked online through KFL & A Public Health, ”the university wrote in a statement today.
In addition, the university says it will also automatically give academic consideration to people who have symptoms or have tested positive for the virus, and will make rapid test kits available to students next week.
“All non-symptomatic students who are not a high-risk contact are strongly encouraged to use these tests within 48 hours of travel outside of the KFL & A region.”
Despite the outbreak in the student community, the university still plans to hold face-to-face exams. Students have been openly calling for all exams to be transferred online after fears arose that students would be put at risk when writing exams.
One, an open letter from a student said that sending students to gyms for exams was “dangerous and deaf to Kingston’s current struggles” to contain the spread of COVID.
Another Engineering student said he was disappointed to see that KFL & A Public Health had not answered your questions about what is being done to prevent the virus from spreading during exam season.
Queen’s director of media relations Julie Brown says, however, that some of the points made in the students’ letter are in fact incorrect, including the claim that those students need a positive PCR test to be exempted.
Reference-ygknews.ca