As an estimated 12,000 college students return to Vermont’s largest city, Mayor Miro Weinberger hopes to greet them with new restrictions on house parties and bar hours.
Weinberger plans to ask the Burlington City Council on Thursday to approve an emergency resolution to suppress social interaction in order to limit the spread of Covid-19 infection, he said at a press conference Tuesday that was streamed live on Facebook.
Weinberger noted that Gov. Phil Scott on Aug. 14 authorized cities and towns to regulate alcohol sales in commercial establishments, and to more tightly limit gathering sizes beyond what Vermont has established under the state of emergency that has been in place since March.
Under the mayor’s proposal, outdoor gatherings at homes will be limited to 25 people, and indoor gatherings at homes to 10 people. Last call for purchasing alcohol in bars and restaurants will be set at 10 p.m. Weinberger said the steps are preemptive, taken without any sign of a new outbreak.
“We want to avoid the backsliding and failed reopenings we have seen in other states and cities in this pandemic,” said Weinberger. On Monday, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill reversed its decision to allow students on campus, shifting undergraduate instruction to all-remote learning after students had already arrived on campus.
“We are hoping there is a way the city can play a role in avoiding that here,” said Weinberger.
Weinberger and University of Vermont officials recently sparred over the university’s planned reopening, which is going on this month with students arriving in separate waves.
In a letter to university officials Aug. 5, the mayor said he wasn’t confident UVM’s plan would keep the community safe, and asked for changes. In a response five days later, UVM President Suresh Garimella said the university was going to stay with its reopening plan.
On Tuesday, Garimella and Weinberger held separate press conferences on the topic but presented a united front, with the two saying they’d work together to send Burlington police into neighborhoods to make sure that students weren’t violating the Covid-19 safety rules. Violators can be ticketed.
“We intend these steps to be a reminder to all residents that the threat of the virus remains very real,” Garimella said Tuesday. “College life this fall must be very different than it is in normal times.”
Weinberger had asked the university to release information about positive Covid-19 tests in the UVM community more than once a week. Garimella said the university will continue to publish the information once a week on its website, but will release the information more frequently to the state Department of Health, which will include the positive cases in the dashboard that it updates every day. Weinberger said Tuesday he was satisfied with that.
UVM now lists six positive cases, five of them off-campus students and one a staff member, in an update dated Aug. 13. UVM Provost Patricia Prelock said at the UVM press conference Tuesday that the off-campus students had been living in town prior to the August move-in date, and were asymptomatic. There was no apparent connection to the staff member who tested positive, she said.
“We simply don’t have that many cases,” said Garimella on Tuesday.
In his letter to UVM, Weinberger also called for stricter penalties for students who miss the regular Covid-19 tests planned at UVM. The school now says students who miss three tests will be suspended.
“The plan for reopening really hinges on the regular tests happening, and that of course is premised on students actually taking the tests,” said Weinberger. “We appreciate this clarification and commitment by UVM that there will be consequences for students who miss multiple tests.”
The school plans to test every student once a week through a partnership with the Broad Institute, a nonprofit affiliated with Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that says it will have results back within about 24 hours. UVM expects to conduct 11,000-12,000 tests per week. It’s also sending tests to students before arrival through a partnership with Vault Health.
Students living on campus who needed to quarantine prior to the start of the school year began moving back onto campus on Aug. 14. Many students who are living off campus have been in town for months. Thousands more are scheduled to move onto campus in coming weeks.
Community members have fiercely criticized UVM’s reopening plans, saying they fear the return of the students will undo the hard work of the social distancing and economic shutdowns that have yielded a very low Covid-19 infection rate in Vermont. A group of Middlebury residents, among them Middlebury College faculty and staff, have asked the president of that smaller liberal arts school to switch to online-only instruction.
Garimella said he was confident that opening for in-person instruction was the right thing to do.
“It’s fair to say UVM students will be among the most tested and closely monitored of any resident of the state of Vermont,” said Garimella.
He estimated the costs of the pandemic to UVM will hit $20 million to $30 million.
“I want to acknowledge the pressures we are all facing,” he said. “There is much uncertainty and with that comes anxiety and fear, I understand, but we need to keep in mind the facts.
“Yes, there are students coming to Burlington from areas with a greater rate of Covid-19 infection, but these students are being pre-tested, retested, quarantined and as necessary isolated. All students will undergo continued screening and testing. And if they break the rules they will face consequences.”
