Plans and options for Tufts University’s reopening were discussed at a virtual meeting last week.

By Alberto Gilman

As schools and colleges prepare to make their fall return, questions and answers were discussed during Tufts University virtual community Zoom meeting on Tuesday, August 4.

The meeting, conducted by Tufts University President Anthony Monaco and his staff, addressed a variety of concerns that members of the community brought up about the reopening plan.

Director of Community Relations Rocco Dirico began the meeting with various updates and highlighting early work in the pandemic through providing assistance to patients, housing medical and essential workers on campuses, and partnerships with other health and community organizations.

President Monaco took over and began his remarks about reopening, stating that there would be changes to the reopening plans since they were first released back in July. “Our strategy from the beginning has been a multi-layered strategy. We’ve had to adjust the environments and protocols for use of our campus facilities,” Monaco said.

Monaco is aware of all the challenges and wanted to assure those concerned that preparing for the return of students is being taken very seriously with a variety of committees and programs implemented for safety.

“We implemented layers of protection including education, wearing masks, distancing, hygiene, reporting on symptoms, health screening, ventilation and cleaning,” Monaco said. “But as we know, no single intervention in that group can prevent an outbreak by itself so it’s important that we think about other strategies which can enhance these normal layers of prevention.”

The plan that Tufts will be following to ensure proper tracking is to invite everyone back, with the notion that some will take gap years or proceed online. Testing for students both on and off campus will occur twice a week along with other faculty and staff that interact with them on a regular basis. Other student facing staff will be tested once a week, Monaco said. Out of region students will be quarantined for three negative tests after arriving and then be enrolled in surveillance testing.

In order to ensure fast results, Tufts has partnered with the Broad Institute in Cambridge to help with checking for cases. Tufts will be submitting 18,500 tests a week during the fall semester. A reminder system and other tracking technology will help in keeping everyone safe.

Off campus and out of the region will arrive August 16. Out of region students who live on campus will arrive on August 27. First week in September in region off campus students and then from September 8 – 13, in region on campus students will arrive.

Situated six feet apart, wearing masks on campus and in classrooms and finding new ways for students to not stay in large gatherings for long periods of time will be a new way to operate. No large gathering will take place of any kind this fall.