Coronavirus Cases Spike At Sacred Heart Days Into School Year

FAIRFIELD, CT — Just days into the school year, Sacred Heart University has seen a spike in coronavirus cases among students who live off campus in Bridgeport.

So far, 10 COVID-19 cases have occurred among off-campus students, and more test results are pending. Students living in Bridgeport must take all classes from home and cannot come on campus until further notice, the university said in a message Thursday. Violators will be suspended 30 days.

“We need to be extremely proactive because we know how quickly a small spike can lead to a significant number of cases,” the message said.

The restrictions do not apply to students who live in university housing in Bridgeport or who live with family in the city, as opposed to fellow students.

In a message Friday, university officials said they expected to make a decision by Sunday or Monday about resuming campus access for Bridgeport off-campus students who have no symptoms and haven’t been asked to isolate or quarantine.

Sacred Heart has about 3,000 students living on campus and 2,500 who live off campus in Bridgeport, Fairfield and Trumbull. Students who test positive are being isolated.

The University of Connecticut Storrs campus has also seen numerous recent cases. UConn has been issuing daily updates about COVID-19 on and off campus. Latest published numbers show a total of 89 cumulative positive cases among residential students since they started to arrive for the fall semester.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health issued a COVID-19 alert statewide for Labor Day weekend after seeing the clusters among college students.

The department's acting commissioner, Deidre Gifford, is "urging all Connecticut residents, especially young adults, to take all necessary precautions to avoid risking exposure to COVID-19 and spreading infection."

While officials expressed concern about some clusters of cases arising, overall Connecticut's positive rate remains among the nation's lowest. For the past two months Connecticut's infection rate has been below 1 percent most days.

Since the pandemic began there have been 53,365 confirmed cases in the state and 4,468 deaths. At one point Connecticut had nearly 2,000 coronavirus-related hospitalizations and that is now down to 58.