Laurentian helping students dealing with COVID-19 on campus

Laurentian University sign in Sudbury, Ont. (File)

Sudbury — Laurentian University says it's doing what it can to help the four people with lab-confirmed cases of COVID-19 currently living on campus.

In his update to the new board of governors, president Robert Haché said the four students are self-isolating and are being aided by the LU CARE team.

"This team has been in constant contact with the students and are providing meals, care packages, as well as mental health and wellness support," Haché

He and the administration were unavailable for an interview with CTV News on Thursday afternoon. At last word, the school was still said to be under investigation for cases of the Omicron variant.

Eric Chappell, president of Laurentian's Students' General Association, said they've offered to help any way they can.

"We have been in contact with residence," Chappell said.

"They've activated a group on campus called the CARE team, which is a new group in the last couple of years at Laurentian that really deals with cases where students need particular support and, you know, we've engaged with them as a group but they seem to have great support."

He said the group has been working with the students on an individual basis.

The campus has had a vaccination policy in place since the start of the semester. There is no booster shot policy in place as of yet.

The news comes as Laurentian announced it would be returning to remote learning at the start of the winter semester Jan. 17. It had already been pushed back a week because of concerns about COVID-19 case counts.

Courses will be delivered remotely from Jan. 17-28 and that window could be extended. A decision on that will be made on Jan. 15.

"It's such a prolific variant that students who have social lives are going to have cases amongst themselves, so I don't know what the cases are at this point in time, but I do know that it's moving upwards," said Chappell.

"This decision is the best decision we can make at this point-in-time, but I do hope as we learn more about hospitalizations and we learn about ICUs and the rates -- if the early data is an indicator that we will be able to return to face-to-face."

Chappell gave credit to the strict policies the school has enforced in how the school has been able to keep numbers so far low.

"One of the things the SGA is really pushing the university for is blended delivery," he said.

"So blended delivery is where the class is face-to-face, but it's also being done over Zoom or other platforms so that gives students the choice to attend class or not. So if a student is feeling sick that day, they can Zoom into the classroom and not put their colleagues at risk."

The decision to move online follows other post-secondary schools, including Cambrian College in Sudbury, which reached its decision last week.

President Bill Best, in a letter to students, revealed they would be moving all of Cambrian's theory online. The school is restricting its facilities to in-person labs for the month of January and those who only have to be on campus.