Community Conversation with Provost Joseph Helble

good afternoon everyone and welcome to our 15th community conversation addressing planning response and operations in the time of covid19 i'm joe helby the provost in the star instructional studio in barrie library on this wednesday afternoon october 14th i'm joined today by justin anderson my vp for communications here at dartmouth from another studio on campus and justin and i will be joined for a conversation focused on the current progression of covid19 in our community joined by dr lisa adams a frequent visitor to community conversations who is in her 18th year as a faculty member in the geisel school of medicine who is the co-chair of dartmouth's covent 19 task force and a specialist in the care and treatment of infectious tb dr antonia altamare in her seventh year as a physician at dartmouth-hitchcock medical center also an infectious disease physician and until recently dhmc hospital epidemiologist and julia griffin town manager of hanover new hampshire a position she has held for the past 24 years coming to hanover in 1996 after serving as the city manager of concord new hampshire before we begin i'd just like to apologize briefly for the short delay we had in getting started we had some technical difficulties but we are ready now to to move forward we'll follow our usual format today with a campus update live q a moderated by justin a conversation with lisa antonia and julia and finally a chance for them to answer your questions directly today i'd like to provide an update on fall term operations and also discuss an early look at winter term planning let's start with the fall term and the status of our testing which is updated daily on our covit 19 dartmouth together dashboard testing continues daily in the leverone field house for employees and students alike and is now also operational one day per week in williamson for those working in the lebanon medical research campus by all accounts operations continue to go smoothly at both facilities waiting times generally remain small and if my morning test last week was any indication adding up each stage of the process i can't have been waiting more than one or two minutes in leverone at most in most cases results are being received the day after the sample is taken consistent with our plan so i'd just like to say thanks again to all of those who arranged the facility the process and the planning and staffing it truly is going smoothly as of yesterday dartmouth had conducted more than 20 500 student tests with a total of eight positives a positive test rate of 0.039 percent counting employees more than 25 000 tests have been conducted for some 7950 unique individuals and as planned we will continue to test this population at the same frequency through the end of fall term now as many of you know in addition to monitoring our own data we monitor the publicly reported testing data of our peers as an indication of how other campuses are managing paying particular attention to those in similar non-urban environments with comparable regular surveillance testing protocols that look much like the protocol that we haven't had we have and have had in place at dartmouth most of our nesgap peers with their smaller student populations remain in the 0.01 to 0.04 positive range with two campuses slightly higher in the 0.1 to 0.3 percent positive range unh and uvm are state research university peers have far larger student populations but have also seen rates remaining low at 0.14 percent and 0.03 percent respectively now in comparison many of you will have seen numbers in the news from private and public universities in other parts of the country that are approximately 15 to 50 times higher meaning positive test results in the 0.5 to 1.5 percent range or even above now in comparison while our numbers and those of our nescac uvm and unh peers remain very encouraging we need to remind ourselves that all of this is happening against a backdrop where case counts are rising nationally reversing a late summer decline as well as regionally new hampshire and vermont in fact have both seen their positive case count double over the past two weeks in new hampshire this represents approximately one thousand new confirmed positive cases in the most recent two-week period while overall case counts in our region remain low relative to most of the rest of the u.s all of this the national trend the regional doubling is a reminder that we need to continue to remain vigilant particularly as we enter the northern new england cold weather season our announcement just two days ago of our first cluster also serves as a reminder that the dartmouth community is not immune as task force co-chairs dr lisa adams and joss kenniston indicated in their monday afternoon message the state of new hampshire defines a cluster as a group of three or more people having active covid19 who were linked even with overall numbers remaining small the emergence of such a cluster is a vivid reminder that we are dealing with an infectious pathogen where transmission can and in fact does occur asymptomatically we are therefore continuing our campus operations at the limited access level as defined on our dartmouth together covet 19 site and it is an indication that those employees whose work enables them to work remotely should continue to do so for the foreseeable future looking ahead to winter term first and foremost operationally we expect winter term to function almost identically to fall term we anticipate offering the opportunity for residential education to approximately one half of our undergraduate student body same as fall term and consistent with the integrated full-year operational plan that president hanlon and i announced on june 29th pre-arrival screening which is pre-travel screening will be conducted for all students same as for the fall term arrival week testing which we currently anticipate occurring on days 0 3 and 7 will also occur same as the fall term quarantine and residence halls will be required and present guidelines indicate that it will be for 14 days again same as the fall term substantial capacity for quarantine and isolation space will be maintained in our residence halls and all indoor spaces including indoor dining will have capacity limits at any one time group size for activities will be limited and campus facilities like the library and the gym will be open but it reduced capacity with rules on masking and distancing and only for those approved for residential education finally classes will be primarily offered by distance or by hybrid modalities with some in-person components with dartmouth with dartmouth departments currently working on finalizing their slate of offerings and more debt modalities for winter term now i say all this so that you know that in other words students faculty and staff alike should anticipate that winter term will operate exactly like fall term albeit with slightly different weather conditions and no outdoor tents now we are looking for ways to provide more opportunity for our students to gather in small groups both indoors and outdoors we have heard you members of the student community and their families who have expressed appreciation for the opportunities that dartmouth has put forth in the fall term from quarantine to the present state of the term and ask for more more opportunities that could engage more students and more structured activities many teams from the dean of the college area are working on this and i will soon be appointing a committee of individuals who will work with them and expand on these efforts looking for ways for dartmouth to offer more including outdoor activities in the winter and to offer opportunities not just for our students but for our faculty and staff to engage in the community as well i'll have more on this as we get closer to the start of winter term now for undergraduate students an important question is who will be resident during winter term as dean lively indicated in a note sent to undergraduate students yesterday afternoon after surveying those students who had been approved for winter term residential education we confirmed that the plans of some had changed and we are now able to offer winter term residential opportunity to additional students students in the class of 23 and above through a waitlist process students interested in being considered for winter term on-campus residential education have this week until 5 pm eastern daylight time this friday to add their name to the waitlist through a simple one-step process by emailing dean.of.the.college at dartmouth.edu with wait list in the subject line and confirming interest by providing their student dartmouth id number in the message that's all it takes as dean lively's email yesterday indicated no additional information is required priority in additional winter term approvals for rooms in college residence halls or greek organization facilities both college owned and privately owned will be assigned randomly to those students who were only approved for on-campus enrollment for the 21 summer term this group being primarily our current sophomores the members of the class of 2023. this will enable those students to have an earlier opportunity to return to campus as otherwise many of them will have waited more than a year to be offered a residential term opportunity after this process has been completed if there is space remaining we will prioritize those students on the waitlist who have thus far been only approved for one term of on-campus enrollment with that prior approved term being either fall or spring all students participating in the waitlist process will be notified of the outcome of the process and therefore whether they've been approved for winter term on campus enrollment by next wednesday october 21st dean lively and her colleagues in student affairs who are managing this process have received several questions from student athletes asking about the status of winter and spring term competitions to help them decide whether to participate in the waitlist process decisions on athletic seasons have not been made these decisions will be made later this year by the ivy league presidents as a group in consultation with their athletic directors decisions may not in fact be made until late in the year to give each of our ivy league universities the time to see how the pandemic evolves as we enter colder weather conditions and enabling us all to make decisions that prioritize the health and safety of our student athletes what this unfortunately means is these student athletes will need to make decisions about participating in the waitlist process well before the competition question has been answered dean lively and her colleagues have also received many thoughtful comments suggesting alternative selection processes or offering reasons as to why other individuals or other groups of students should receive priority we recognize that there are many ways the selection process could be run we recognize that each process by prioritizing one group will seem appropriate to some and unfair to others unfortunately conditions have not changed and data from different regions different cities even different campuses have shown that steps that increase population density in smaller spaces and reduce masking and distancing requirements increase the likelihood of disease transmission from the beginning in these forums i have said that we at dartmouth remain determined to follow a plan that allows the maximum number of students to navigate any term successfully what this means is not increasing student numbers at this time which unfortunately means that there will be disappointed students and families i do ask that all members of the dartmouth community understand why we are taking these steps this truly is an extraordinary and unprecedented time for higher education and for us all for those who will be resident during winter term we will be staggering arrival dates as we did for fall term we ask that students not make travel plans at this time as arrival and testing dates have not yet been determined students will receive housing and assigned arrival dates in november and should defer travel planning until that time now in addition after consultation with the covid19 task force the academic working group and faculty leadership including the deans and associate deans of arts and sciences thayer and the guarini school of graduate and advanced studies we also anticipate delaying the start of winter term by a few days most likely to thursday january 7th for undergraduate fair and graduate students only tuck and guidance winter term programs will not be affected and will open on the currently scheduled dates now why are we considering this a delay of a few days in the start of winter term classes for undergraduate thayer and guarini students with an associated delay of a few days in the end of winter term would enable all of these students to travel back to campus after the holidays would avoid having large numbers of students in residence halls in quarantine over the new year's holiday and would enable us to have the necessary staffing on campus to manage comprehensive arrival week testing that i described a few moments ago delaying the start of winter term by a few days would also delay the conclusion of winter term by a few days the remaining questions that we are exploring before finalizing the calendar for winter term are focused on the need to transition our residential facilities between winter term and spring-term residents many universities have substantially reduced the length of their spring term break because it's a mid-semester break not between semester's break students in those universities return to their same rooms for us the quarter system means that there will be substantial undergraduate student turnover with first year students returning to campus during that break week and we need to ensure that we have the staffing and sufficient time to make the transitions work i anticipate announcement of the details in the next two weeks no later than our next community conversation on october 28th now let me end with just a few thoughts on the challenge we're facing and how we are doing as i've often said in this forum there is absolutely no question that this is hard we're asking everyone students and employees alike to sacrifice some personal freedom in support of the community good i understand how challenging this is and i know we are all tired of living this separated and at times quarantine existence i understand well the parents and students who expressed some frustration with restrictions on group size or indoor gatherings or travel and i understand the frequent references to hanover as a bubble despite the increase in cases in new hampshire and vermont these past two weeks the extent of the disease in this region is low relative to much to the rest of the country but this is not a true bubble not an environment that's fully contained new disease counts in the state and in our region are not zero and are in fact increasing new disease counts in our dartmouth community are exceedingly low but they are not zero and yesterday's pause in two major clinical trials reminds us that we cannot count on a global vaccine being delivered and available tomorrow this is not a time to step back from the measures that have helped us navigate this pandemic this global pandemic this well this far it's worth remembering for all of us that this disease truly can be devastating to put it in context nationally we've already lost in nine months of covid more than half the number of people that we lost in all of world war ii we've already lost more than we did as a nation through the entirety of world war one the vietnam war 911 and operations enduring freedom and iraqi freedom combined i don't say this to paint a bleak picture picture i say this to ask all of us to summon our resolve we have had cases in our community and we do now and thus far there is no indication of widespread contact no need for widespread quarantine the actions we have been taking as a community collectively are working i wish i could promise that winter term would be more flexible if there is the ability to make it so supported by public health data and guidance we will do so but if not i am going to be sitting here and asking for continuing sacrifice for the good of the whole from this community so i ask you in addition to participating in regular surveillance testing please complete the temperature and self-assessment or tsa screening every day if you're working or living on site maintain six foot social distancing avoid large group gatherings follow travel restrictions we will get through this and we will be better for it having done so as a community wear those masks i so look forward to celebrating that moment with all of you when this is behind us but until then we do have work to do thank you all for everything you are doing to engage our students and work as part of a community and keep this community safe justin over to you i look forward to hearing a few of the questions that might be on people's minds thank you uh thank you joe and nice to see you today a lot of questions uh have have come in so far a lot of really good questions and just as a preview uh i i should mention there's a lot of questions here for julia griffin so a lot of people are eager to hear from julia so uh we we will definitely look forward uh to what you have to ask her and uh rest assured that i'll be able to chime in as well um i i'd like to uh start with a with a questioner who um submitted this question before you referenced uh the fact that we don't live in a bubble this questioner asks it seems that dartmouth has built nearly a perfect bubble and why not close the bubble and allow normal activity within that bubble um and not let students out not let students go out to quiche or to lebanon or or to wherever else just close it up and essentially have what this what the questioner refers to as like a normal a normal term in the bubble all right you know that's a that's an interesting question justin and it's something that we actually did talk about with the task force in the very early stages of designing our summer plan and we asked ourselves is it truly feasible could we truly build an impermeable membrane barrier effectively around the campus and keep our students in and keep the surrounding community out for a variety of reasons justin that just didn't feel right didn't feel right to who we are as a university it wasn't reasonable to imagine how that would work with faculty and staff who needed to access campus as soon as you allow that you have pores in the membrane you don't have a perfect bubble we thought about the ability or the desirability of keeping students restricted and confined to the campus what about the students who just want to get out and experience the fresh air and go for a long run on their own or get out and stretch their legs and go for for a hike and so what we tried to develop is a set of rules that we thought were reasonable and achievable for most asked everyone to be vigilant but didn't pretend that we could truly put up an impermeable barrier around the campus particularly with faculty and staff needing to come in and out to be able to do their jobs and interact with students and so it's it's an interesting idea as a you know as i've said often i'm an engineer and i and i like i i like the idea of thinking about process and theoretical constructs and then applying a filter that says how realistic is this to achieve and what would be the impact if we were able to achieve it and we made the decision that in the interest of community health and student mental health and giving some flexibility and freedom the operating model we have was the right way to go but it's an intriguing idea uh joe i should also say that in addition to uh a steady stream of questions that have come in uh since the beginning of the webcast today uh i also received uh separately a lot of email from uh parents with questions which is great i i encourage uh parents and whomever to send questions because that's a great way to to reach me and for you and i to be able to address those questions um of uh of the parents i heard from uh i think that it's safe to say that the that the most asked question uh was about um students who have been asked to leave campus this fall how many students have been asked to leave campus this fall broadly speaking why this information is important because it helps guide our students on how to conduct themselves there are simply too many rumors around this and it is creating fear and uncertainty that might not be necessary and could be better guided why is there not more transparency so um i think joe i'll take this one and then and then you can you can certainly add to it um if you think that's appropriate um i should just uh from sort of a a 30 000 foot view on this you know we have never dartmouth has never announced uh when students are asked to leave campus uh and that number is not quantified at the end of the term or the end of the year um i mean simply put it would be a violation of um of our students privacy um and it can lead to targeting and it can lead to people trying to figure out who has been asked to leave campus and why um and just generally speaking um we try uh to avoid that uh because we truly think um that it would be unfair to the to the privacy and confidentiality of the of the students who have been asked to leave now i recognize that we have uh we have a balance that we have to strike between uh transparency and privacy um and in that particular uh in this particular instance um we think that that that privacy is what is what is truly um uh wins the day um i think also um on this issue i think it's in context matters uh it's extremely important um when the event that would lead to someone being asked um happens uh there is as as i think everyone knows an ever evolving public health situation and what is happening on any given day week uh uh or or period of time is going to determine sort of how we respond uh how we respond to um what are brought to us as as potential violations also important to know that that the dean of the college takes those reports very seriously and evaluates them as fairly and rigorously as they can um no one is uh relishes the the um the uh duty of having to ask a student to leave it's not something that anyone wants us to do um i will say just sort of to to wrap it up um that you know a good rule of thumb is that if you follow sort of the basic um the basic tenets of wearing a mask we're specified maintaining physical distance filling out the tsa and importantly avoid gathering in groups larger than nine um or 25 if it's a campus sponsored event you should be just fine so we understand that this is a this is on people's minds um we understand that that folks would like to hear more um but where we are uh coming down on the side of uh of the importance of privacy and maintaining the privacy of of our students joe do you want to add anything to that no i think that's you've summarized it well justin that's exactly right i mean privacy first and foremost we want to respect the the privacy of these students and we also recognize that for some perhaps for many it was it was an accident it was a misstep it was not thinking so we don't relish asking students to head home but we are thinking first and foremost of the collective health of the community and that's why it's important that we adhere to these rules it's all the measures together that it takes to keep the community safe it's all these measures together that have enabled us to navigate it as well as we have so far um another uh question that is coming up a lot uh from from the parents um is is really about the the the rules on campus as they relate to uh interaction with one another um and and activities um uh and why there aren't more opportunities you you mentioned you mentioned uh in your opening that we are looking uh to create more opportunities i guess what might be helpful for for a lot of these questioners uh is perhaps explaining why these restrictions are in place uh it seems as if some people think that perhaps they are arbitrary or or certainly too draconian so um i guess if you could try to explain to people why they are in place and why we made the decisions that we made perhaps that would be helpful i mean at a high level justin we're following federal and state guidance and we're looking at best practices as recommended to us by federal and state authorities and so this has to do with keeping group size small keeping people masked and distancing and keeping people separated and preferably in outdoor environments to reduce the spread of a disease and which can be spread we now understand by aerosol transmission and this is something that was speculated on six months ago but the data have only become more convincing in the past three to four weeks and so it's it is taking the appropriate steps we can take to keep the community safe and operating under what we consider an appropriate margin of caution we would like to be able to assemble larger groups we would like to be able to offer more opportunity and we hope to be able to explore those in the winter term but as i said fall term we are taking our guidance from best practices from recommendations from the federal and state government from what our epidemiologists are telling us and also in terms of indoor gatherings that may seem innocent if several students want to get together in a room we've mapped our facilities and we know a fair bit about air flow and circulation and turnover rate of the indoor environment in these different rooms and the frequency with which surfaces are are not disinfected and all of this has gone into our determining a set of rules that govern the amount of time that students can get together or the numbers that they can assemble in an indoor spaces they might seem arbitrary they might seem even silly in some cases they were all designed with understanding of the environment of understanding of how the disease transmits transmits as best as we can and doing our best to keep students outside of that disease transmission threshold again to protect the health of the community um joe we have time for one more question and then um uh i i'd love for you to be able to get to our guests um this question is is about um health safety and refers to something that dean lively said for every policy we made about residence halls the primary consideration was public health um and certainly you i others um have talked about uh the public health being our top priority as as we're making our decisions this person goes on to ask how does mental health figure into that statement or physical wellness or academic success what responsibility does the college have to serve the whole student and every student you know we we so i'll just be brief justin in the interest of time but we take that very very seriously and in fact if you look at dean lively's email to the students yesterday even though it was focused on winter term in the waitlist process she took time to comment on ways to get engaged with activities ways to support students in their physical and mental health and ways to give them access to counselors deans and resources that could help them talk through for first year students to transition to college which is difficult under the best of circumstances for some students and certainly doing so in this time of pandemic and restricted freedom we are in the process of hiring additional mental health counselors and as i said we are looking very hard and carefully at additional activities that we can offer to our students group and structured and organized including ones that would be open to members of the faculty and staff to build community in more extensive and intentional ways in the winter term when it's particularly hard given the fact that as many may know it's dark longer in new england in january than it is in the summer it's colder and snowier but if you're dressed right and you're engaged in the right activity it can be a beautiful new way to explore a different part of the environment a different part of the world so we're working on putting those opportunities together exactly for these reasons to give the whole student the whole person a chance to engage so thanks to whoever wrote in with that question i appreciate it and it is very much top of mind so with that justin thank you for the questions thanks to all i apologize we couldn't get to more of them because of our delays and some technical issues at the beginning i'd like to turn now to our guests dr lisa adams from the geisel school of medicine and our task force co-chair dr antonia altamare a physician at dartmouth-hitchcock an infectious disease specialist and recently the dhmc hospital epidemiologist and julia griffin hanover town manager for nearly a quarter century so welcome and thanks to all of you for joining us i'm going to move quickly through these questions so we have time to bring in questions from the outside and lisa i'd like to start with you if i may your note to the campus on monday announced our first cluster confirmed three new positive cases identified within the off-campus student community even with these positives our overall weight rate our overall rate of confirmed infection remains very low i think we now have eight positives and some 20 000 student tests but students testing positive are placed in what we call isolation so what does that mean specifically for our students and how is it different if they're on campus or off campus how are we supporting them i'm happy to explain more about our isolation process so just as a reminder isolation is the public health practice of separating someone who is ill with a contagious disease from those who are not ill and again just to point out that individuals who have symptoms consistent with covid must also isolate while they're awaiting their test result so isolation for our students generally means moving into one of our dorm spaces reserved for this purpose the main features being access to a single bedroom a single-use bathroom we also arrange for meal delivery which students can actually order from dining services using their dining app now students who are living off campus may be able to safely isolate in their off-campus home but if not all off-campus students whether they're an undergraduate a graduate or professional student are offered the option to isolate on campus whether they can safely isolate off campus or not is determined through a discussion with our college health services team and of course the same guidelines would apply they need to have access to a single bedroom a single use bathroom and a way to get meals or or food delivered now once in isolation our college health nurses are in touch with all students whether they're on or off campus daily to check in and see what they might need and see if they need perhaps a higher level of care and if they're on campus in isolation our dix house providers can actually make sort of house calls to see them if that if that's needed um and in relation to the mental health concerns and sort of the whole student um wellness to combat the social isolation that that can accompany the physical isolation we do offer counseling services to everyone as an additional sort of supportive service now i will say we know isolation can be challenging especially when someone is not feeling very ill and our students like most young people with covid typically have very mild symptoms or in some cases no symptoms at all so i have to emphasize that we really have appreciated our students good spirits and compliance with the strict isolation practices as part of their commitment to protecting their roommates their their floor mates and the broader dartmouth and local communities great that's great lisa thanks and thanks also for the comment on supporting the students mental health it ties in nicely with the last question that a listener had asked of me and tony i'd like to turn to you now and i've got a question or two about spread of disease in the upper valley but before turning to that this is your first time with us on community conversations so if you don't mind i'd like to ask you just about your recent role at dartmouth hitchcock medical center what does it mean to be the hospital epidemiologist sure so in general epidemiology is a branch of medical science that deals with incidence distribution and control of diseases in a population but specifically to the hospital the um utmost priority is really the health and safety of the patients as well as the staff and employees that work there so tracking infections that one would acquire because they came to the hospital but not the reason they came to the hospital so trying to really lessen the impact of any of these unintended harmful consequences of being in the hospital that's on the patient side and of course in on the employee side it's preventing exposures to the employees and infections that could happen in our staff right that's great and and it's gone extraordinarily well as i understand we had joanne conroy with us as a guest a few months ago and she was quite proud in saying that the rate of transmission within the hospital has been essentially zero which is extraordinary given the number of patients that you've seen over the past six months so so if you're responsible well done um what can turning to the the spread of disease in the upper valley over the course of the pandemic what what can you tell us what trends are you seeing in the geographic areas that dh supports and what indicators are you paying attention to yes i think everyone has noticed recently like most of the other states in the united states that case rates and numbers are going up um and in fact the majority of our cases throughout this pandemic really have been in our southern region really the more populated areas like manchester nashua and the larger counties where we just have more dense population some of the things that we track really are the number of cases cases by population that way we can get a rate and standardize it and be able to compare across states we look at hospitalizations because that's certainly a surrogate for severity of infection and rising cases and then we look at our percent positivity rate of all tests being done and this has been very helpful for two reasons one are we actually doing enough testing and and do we really know our prevalence in our community uh and two when we start seeing that rate go up and we think we are doing enough testing it really means there are more cases and we have always been in the one percent range and if you get down into more granular details we are actually increasing and the most recent percentage is 1.3 percent although that doesn't seem like a lot that point three percent more uh in a state our size actually means a lot um so our rate is certainly going up and those are kind of the big three things we look at great thank you so lisa i'm sorry julia i'd like to turn to you now and think a little bit more locally and think very specifically about the hanover community or the hanover core of the upper valley i want to ask you about specifics for any students but certainly we all know from reading the valley news recently and hearing reports from colleagues in town that they've recently been cases reported in the hanover and also in the lebanon schools can you tell us how these cases came to light to the extent that you can and how the system the schools the town and the local health care community have responded how are we addressing these so these cases began to crop up about a week ago joe um we previously had two cases in the hartford vermont school district right across the river about three weeks ago and then within the last week we had two cases that showed up in the lebanon school district then last friday we had our first case at the ray school hanovers elementary school then a case in the middle school richmond middle school in hanover and now a third case in the the ray school has cropped up we also have one case in the marian cross elementary school in norwich so that's a total of four cases in our public school system two cases in our neighbor lebanon to the south previous two cases across the river in hartford vermont there's very very close coordination in this region across the school district superintendents offices school principals school nurses our health officers we all work very closely together and we also work closely with both state departments of public health both in the reporting and the contact tracing work that's that's going on and particularly in hanover coordinating very closely with our school principals and school staff administration staff and decisions regarding isolation quarantine what classrooms perhaps should be quarantining and what notification procedures we need to implement okay great thanks so let me uh step back to i'm going to have another question or two for you julia let me step back to antonio and in some ways build from that and that response and antonia you touched on this a bit in your last answer but although the totals in the schools and in the region remain relatively low the number of confirmed cases as i said earlier in my remarks has doubled over the past two weeks in both new hampshire and vermont what do you attribute this to at a high level and are there any additional measures that you would like to see the state or the region take in response so as a result of the state's investigation of these cases we know that the majority of these cases are actually happening in small clusters so these are people that are either within families or close contacts of families and they think it's attributable to increasing small gatherings that are happening people have been really good about avoiding large gatherings but as a result now people are gathering in their own homes with maybe a few more people and as more people gather with more people you start having this exponential increase in exposure opportunities um so there's that and then there's just known contacts with other cases that seems to be importing it in i think you know a lot of our increase is probably due to the slow the feel of what happens when we started opening back up restaurants going from 25 capacity to 50 to now full capacity um the fact that people are just downright tired with this situation uh and becoming maybe a little more complacent or daring and perhaps going to events they weren't going to before maybe not wearing masks maybe not staying as quarantined as we had been when we were kind of in our quarantine mode and i think the other thing that goes against us particularly in new england is the weather's starting to get cooler and so the gatherings that used to be happening outside or the things that we like to do outside are now shifting more to indoor spaces where of course there's more risk of infectious spread so i think some of the important things that our state could do and we are one of few left and i know it's always been controversial but it's to perhaps mandate masking i think we've been really good about it but i think it's been really difficult for individual employments and schools and communities to actually implement it without there being kind of this order or this mandate to do so i think it would level the playing field for everyone in new hampshire to say well if we're in new hampshire if we have visitors or or if we're just out in public spaces and around people then we should have masks on obviously if you're hiking and you're away from people it's not as important but i can certainly attest to the fact that if you're not wearing a mask hiking you're in the minority i've been seeing tons of people wearing masks and i think it's all because we really want to do the right thing and everyone in our state and community really are trying and i think that's been our benefit all along compared to what's happening in other states that are as rural as us yeah that's that's actually an encouraging message and that's certainly something here as a as a private university campus although not a bubble with walls around it but as a private university campus we have tried and i have tried so many have tried to stress that with our students who've largely been responding when in doubt wear your mask you're sitting in a room by yourself but someone else could walk through wear a mask you're on the green and you might run into other people wear a mask there is very little cost to doing so the sense of self assurance that it provides to everyone else is wonderful and it helps prevent transmission of disease which can be asymptomatically transmitted and so it's hugely important so thank you i want to make sure we have time to get to justin and questions that come in from outside so i just want to take a moment to ask one last question julie i'm going to ask this of you i'd ask you to be brief if you can in your response but i know this is on a quest a question that's on the minds of many particularly our student community over the course of the summer i think in in late july you wrote an op ed as the town manager in hanover that offered some thoughts to our community on what you would like to see in terms of student behavior and this of course was before we had brought students back and you had no way none of us had any way of knowing how that would unfold but what motivated you to to write that op-ed what message did you hope to convey and what kind of interactions have you had with students since then um that that the motivation to write that up at joe came from from two directions one the behavior that we were seeing of our dartmouth student population and not just the dharma student population but when you're talking to dharma students one way to approach them is through the dartmouth uh we were seeing similar problems with our high school in younger age population and young adults in their in their sort of 20s was the large gatherings without masks no social distancing that had us really concerned about the potential for covet spread and we were particularly concerned about the potential for if that practice continued through the fall with students who had been away from town since last march and would be coming back to the campus in the fall potentially bringing more potent potentially bringing more virus vector with them that we could see a covet spread in a part of the state where we had worked so hard since last march to prevent the spread of covet so i wrote the letter to try and and and shake things up a little bit in terms of folks we need to pay attention to this and i also wrote it because i'm a very active person participant in the international town gown association which is a group of town and college officials that get together on a regular basis to talk about issues of mutual concern and as you would imagine town and city managers since last spring in college communities have been talking very actively about this issue so actively that that we decided as a group we needed to begin to take a position firmly reinforcing the notion that we need all of our population to take this seriously but in particular focusing our efforts on the college age population because the risk risks are so great that transmission can occur in that population without significant symptoms or um you know a really significant impact of the disease but can be spread to other more vulnerable members of the population right great well thank you well it certainly got noticed in our student community and i i think there are times julia where being provocative is a is helpful and exactly the right approach to take and it certainly elicited a large conversation on our campus this summer including in the d that i think was helpful to all of us and thinking about moving into fall term operations so justin let me turn it over to you in the small amount of time we have remaining and see what kind of questions have come in for our guests um sure uh joe thank you and uh i would like to extend a little bit beyond 430 um which is a little unusual given our our late start so uh i i hope that uh that we can get in a couple more questions than we then we might otherwise be able to um and uh since you ended with julia and talked about being provocative i guess i'll stay with julia with what might be a little bit of a provocative question um uh a viewer writes in uh it appears that the town of hanover and dartmouth have different public health standards when it comes to masking and such how are you aligned the town and dartmouth and how are you working together to keep the entire population in hanover safe and dartmouth students not feel like the town is out to get them so the the good news is justin we have been working very closely with the college since early march before before it was clear that we had a pandemic by the tail but when we were anticipating that we were heading down a long dark potential long dark tunnel and and coordinating on our public health approaches the challenge in a state like new hampshire however which is a purple state with a republican governor who has tended to support the president's position on the issue for example of universal masking our governor's not been willing to make masking a universal requirement in the state consequently individual towns have had to adopt these ordinances over the course of about two months this summer scrambling to try and anticipate in many cases in our college towns the return of college students consequently we have we have a sort of patchwork quilt of of um compliance around issues like masks but the by far the population that we've been most pleased by have been dartmouth college students since they've come back in september when the college really pressed this issue and the town was able to back it up with their own mask ordinance it was the college students who who were taking the leadership role and sort of particularly emulating for our high school and middle school students what they need to be doing when they came into town uh thanks julia and i i just uh want to take a moment to just acknowledge that there has been very good coordination and uh uh we've been in meetings together emails exchanges and such and so thanks for that and i know that it will continue um i i'd like to go to antonia um and and maybe try to uh try to turn a little bit to uh what could be positive uh news um at least in the future um somebody uh writes in to ask um what what should i think this is the context of seeing increased cases uh in the region in the country uh someone writes in to ask um what signs should we look for uh to to know that or to believe that the that the the we have actually turned a corner and that things appear to be getting better uh and that perhaps we might be you know beginning to get closer to some form of normalcy yeah so what are those signs so some of the things that um were making me uh happy in the summer were the declining number of patients that were hospitalized in our state which we got down to single digits which was incredible down from in the hundreds at our worst uh and the number of new positives that were happening on a daily basis so really looking at well how many new infections are really happening and how long is it taking that number to double that's our case doubling count you know we went out a couple weeks where it was you know it was taking seven to 14 days as opposed to just a few double and so that slowing of the infection rate is certainly a clue um as is the number of patients being hospitalized i think um when people ask me how long is this gonna go on i don't think it's gonna be a switch turning off i think this is going to be a very slow long process but i do think there will be an end eventually i just think we need to accept right now what might be the new norm to get us through this with the least amount of harm to ourselves and those around us uh lisa uh if i could go to you um a questioner asks whether we can elaborate on uh staff positive cases um and observes that there uh that there appear to be uh people who are positive who were not tested um uh or who did not appear to contract uh the the the virus on campus basically the question is should we be concerned about community spread well i i think as antonia mentioned we um and joe mentioned too we are seeing increased community transmission that's been confirmed by both new hampshire and vermont health departments which to me again is just a message about doubling down on all the things that we've been doing to keep ourselves uh safe you know that we were doing throughout the summer and to really be continuing those uh fastidiously throughout throughout the fall i i think again we are we know there's community transmission we have to be prepared for that um and that is something frankly that i think as we've also said is something that we would expect to happen with the change in season and shift to it more indoor time you know i do think our testing protocols our testing schedule by identifying cases in in employees shows that it's working we are we are identifying cases very early on we're able to make sure that people are isolating perform um contact investigations quickly so that contacts are uh are able to quarantine and be tested promptly so i feel like our system is working our process is working and doing all the right things that it that it should be doing so that we are able to uh react quickly and and do what we can to halt transmission in the cases that we identify um julia i'd like to go back to you for for one last question um and that seems fitting because uh as the representative of hanover whether you whether you uh work at dartmouth or attend dartmouth or work at dartmouth hitchcock um as antonia does uh or are a viewer in the community uh you are we are bonded by our our our link to the town of hanover um and one uh person writes in uh a question specifically for julia griffin how are you addressing the potential for transmission in town in the town of hanover particularly with restaurants operating at at least as this person describes at full capacity good question justin something that we worry about and quite frankly we have an awful lot of folks in the upper valley who even if a restaurant can operate at full capacity once we close our outdoor dining and they're reverting to indoors i think people aren't going to patronize the restaurants by sitting in so we're actually working with a restaurant group on a couple of drive-through take out options one-stop shopping as it were for individuals who want to order a takeout meal and know it's available for pickup in one location rather than having to dash into each restaurant to to enable us to continue to support our our downtown restaurant community without feeling pressured to dine in because as i said i'm concerned that the dining in option is not going to be particularly successful one because people are uncomfortable in two because i think we may see more community transmission which is what we want to avoid so take out curbside take out curbside really important we're trying to enhance the opportunities for our downtown restaurants uh thanks a lot uh julia and and thank you also to uh lisa and antonia that was uh really interesting and helpful uh and to our viewers out there again apologies that that we had technical difficulties uh at the beginning uh we promise that won't happen next uh next time uh right joe right justin we'll hold you to that all right well let me add my thanks julia lisa and antonia for a very helpful and engaging discussion on the the health situation and the measures that we're taking in the community it's extraordinarily informative and i know matters a lot to people in the dartmouth community and the surrounding upper valley region and let me just finish with a just another word to our viewers and just a reminder that we all acknowledge how challenging this is and i i simply ask we all ask for your patience and understanding with the restrictions for your understanding of why we are operating the way we are operating to ensure the maximum potential for a successful fall term and a successful winter term return and i also ask to every member of the dartmouth community particularly when things seem particularly challenging in a moment as winter approaches i ask you to picture that gathering picture that moment whether it's going to be next june at commencement or later in the summer or sometime next fall but when we get through this when we will get through this when we gather as a community and we have the opportunity to be together in one place maybe on the green and celebrate what we have collectively done to navigate this year successfully and return to normal operations how extraordinary that's going to feel having done so as a community so thank you for your engagement thank you for your support thank you for everything all of you are doing to help enable continuity of our education for our extraordinary students that's all for this week we look forward to seeing you again in two weeks on october 28th until then everyone stay safe and stay well we'll see you in two weeks you

Channel: Dartmouth

Views: 1,189

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: o8gOIFuC5xo

Length: 59min 55sec (3595 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020