Cal State Long Beach campus on COVID-19 lockdown after five test positive for virus
All students on the California State University, Long Beach campus are under a quarantine lockdown and in-person instruction was suspended Monday after five students who met off-campus earlier this month tested positive for the coronavirus.
The lockdown has been in place since Saturday, a day after campus officials learned that a number of students met off-campus in violation of the school’s COVID-19 guidelines, officials said in a statement.
“We became aware of a number of students who have not heeded our guidance related to COVID-19 precautions and congregated socially off-campus. Five of these students have now tested positive for the illness,” university president Jane Close Conoley said in a statement, hinting at possible discipline. “We will be investigating student conduct issues and addressing them appropriately.”
Four of the students who contracted the virus live in residence halls on campus. A fifth lives off campus, said university officials.
In all, 328 Cal State Long Beach students are under the two-week quarantine, the Orange County Register reported.
Long Beach health officials will soon begin testing students and university contact tracers will also go to work.
Meantime, face-to-face instruction has come to a halt as officials review the number of employees on campus, offer additional tests and work with health officials to trace contracts outside the Long Beach campus.
Cal State Long Beach sharply shrank the numbers of students in on-campus housing and reduced the number of classes offered this fall.
Conoley called the student and class reduction measures a “conservative approach” to getting fall instruction underway amid the virus.
“Unfortunately, even with our proactive efforts we need to adapt and respond to this new challenge,” Conoley said.
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