HANOVER — Dartmouth College is planning to lift some restrictions imposed because of its COVID-19 outbreak amid signs that the rate of transmission “has slowed significantly this week,” Provost Joseph Helble said in an email to the college community Friday afternoon.
Surveillance testing Friday morning found two new cases of students with COVID-19, which Helble said was the “lowest single-day total” since the beginning of last week.
Dartmouth’s COVID-19 dashboard showed 137 active cases, all but two of them students and down from 146 on Thursday. In addition, the number of students and employees in quarantine and isolation had declined by almost 10% to 276, according to the dashboard.
As a result, effective Monday morning Dartmouth plans to ease some of the restrictions it imposed last month to try to contain the outbreak, including allowing in-person classes and undergraduate student laboratories to resume, “at the discretion of faculty and primary investigators,” Helble said.
In addition, Dartmouth plans to reopen Baker-Berry Library and other study spaces, and Alumni Gym and the Zimmerman Fitness Center also will reopen with reduced capacity.
However, the easing of restrictions was contingent on two major factors over the weekend — that Dartmouth experiences fewer than five new daily cases of students testing positive for the virus, and that there are “no major COVID-19 guideline violations over the weekend,” Helble wrote. In other words, no big parties.
Helble earlier this week had said it was evident that the failure to wear masks and socially distance by a number of students was the “primary cause” of the Dartmouth outbreak.
Even with the pending loosening of restrictions, Dartmouth said students should not visit classmates in their dorm rooms nor gather in hallways and that common spaces and kitchens in residence halls will remain closed for the time being. Dining will also remain “grab and go,” as opposed to in-person eating in cafeterias.
Dartmouth also plans to ramp up some outdoor activities, including running a bus again to the Dartmouth Skiway, though with reduced capacity, he said.
HANOVER — Nearly 70 people are in quarantine due to a case of COVID-19 at Hanover High School, according to school administrators.
The case, which school officials learned of on Friday, requires that 65 students and three employees quarantine for 10 days after their last exposure to the infected person, Interim Principal Jim Logan wrote in an email to families.
Logan said he was “hopeful that this is an isolated case,” but would reach out to families with any updates.
Nora Doyle-Burr and John P. Gregg contributed to this report.