I am gravely concerned about the transmission of COVID-19 at Boston College.
Commissioner of Health and Human Services (HHS) Deborah Youngblood, our HHS team and I have been meeting with Boston College for many weeks, including prior to their fall opening. We strongly encouraged strict adherence to public health guidelines.
Boston College community members are integrally connected with Newton ̶ they live, shop, dine & drink, play sports, work and recreate amongst our community. When COVID-19 spikes within the Boston College community, this impacts all of us in Newton.
Today we convened a meeting with Boston College along with our partners in Boston’s Public Health Commission, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) and the Commonwealth’s Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders.
We let Boston College’s administration know our expectations for immediate action given the outbreak. BC has had 104 positive cases since they re-opened a few weeks ago.
First, we requested that the oversight of positive case investigations and contact tracing be transferred to the City of Newton’s Health and Human Services Department (HHS) for students who reside in Newton, both on and off campus. Newton’s HHS staff will continue working with our State partners at the Community Tracing Collaborative (CTC) for case investigations and contact tracing. While BC set up a robust system for case investigations internally, the CTC’s capacity, experience and comprehensive approach is needed at this juncture. This will ensure that Newton has timely and transparent information on each individual positive person. This enables us to more quickly identify clusters and the source and extent of the transmission of the virus. The Boston Public Health Commission is also making this change for students who reside in Boston. Our State partners fully support this request. BC has agreed to make this change.
Second, we requested that BC increase their testing. Boston College administrators said that they tested approximately 4,600 people two weeks ago and another 2,900 last week. Next week, they intend to test between 3,000 to 4,000 BC community members. We additionally asked that they begin providing a daily number of all tests administered and a calculated positivity rate to help us effectively track the virus within their college community. In the coming days, we will be continuing to focus on their testing protocols. This will include situations in which multiple people test positive in a dorm within the 14-day incubation period of the virus. We continue to recommend that Boston College adjust their testing practices and increase the number.
Third, I let Boston College administrators know that I do not support the addition of any isolation or quarantine facilities for students in any off-campus Newton locations (e.g., leasing space in a local hotel). BC should provide the quarantine and isolation facilities required for all on and off campus students on their own campus properties. In particular, adding this service for off-campus students is important for containing viral spread. Boston College is almost out of space in the facilities they designated in their operational plan, which is only for their on-campus students who need quarantining and isolating. While BC is looking to set up additional sites potentially in Brookline, Dover, Cohasset and Newton, an alternative may be reducing the number of in-person students.
If Boston College does reduce its in-person student population, I strongly urge they do so with careful adherence to public health principles to avoid spread of the infection to other locales.
Newton values our Boston College neighbor and considers the many faculty and students a positive part of our community. As an integral part of Newton and Greater Boston, Boston College must re-consider their original operational plan.
Boston College must take swift, decisive and effective action now to contain the spread of this serious infectious disease. The data on the spike in positive Boston College cases demonstrates viral transmission. They must act now to protect the health of their BC community and all our Newtonians. They must act now so Newton’s low positivity rate does not rise. Boston College must act now to ensure that their operations do not threaten our ability to begin to reopen Newton schools in-person, to get our residents back to work, and our restaurants, retailers and other businesses back on their feet.
We have learned COVID-19 moves quickly and we have to move even quicker to stay ahead of it.
Warmly,
Ruthanne
We need to know BC’s response adap
While I think this is an important issue given the campus’ intimate integration with our city and the Mayor is right to press on it, I’d dearly love to see the Mayor devote a similar amount of energy to advocating for or working with neighboring communities/institutions on a plan for more robust testing in our public schools. And I’d like to see similar energy towards either making the case for getting our schools open – thus far lacking – or coming up with a sound process of engagement, even at this late date. Really, are teenagers hanging out in groups across town any less likely to cause spread than the BC freshmen?
I could not agree more with the above comment-
I too would “love to see the Mayor devote a similar amount of energy to advocating for or working with neighboring communities/institutions on a plan for more robust testing in our public schools. And I’d like to see similar energy towards either making the case for getting our schools open – thus far lacking – or coming up with a sound process of engagement, even at this late date. Really, are teenagers hanging out in groups across town any less likely to cause spread than the BC freshmen?”
Please spend time and energy on a plan to open the High Schools in Newton–
I agree with the above sentiment that the Mayor needs to be working on getting the hs kids back in school. I think however the issues are intertwined. In one of the Mayor’s previous communications she stated that in the numbers that are reported by the state which codes our level of risk. BC Students are classified by where they live. Thus if their dorm or off campus apt is in Newton and they are diagnosed positive it goes into Newton’s numbers. If they spike particularly those living in Newton then our city has potential to go to a higher risk level and there isn’t any in newton kids in school, etc.
BC needs to step up. How can they think their approach is anything but reactive. They are only testing a small portion of their students each week with that approach it takes a month or more to go through the entire student body. In the meantime they are exposing each other. It just seems so flawed, Other schools are testing every students weekly or more and requiring kids live insolation into they have multiple clear tests. Bc shows little concern about those around them.
While BC needs to step up testing, Mayor Fuller should listen to her own words. Teachers, parents and students want testing to return to the classroom.
Step up Mayor Fuller! Provide testing to teachers and students in Newton, especially to get in person learning at the high schools.
-PS I am sure BC loves Mayor Fuller, since Newton took Webster Woods from BC, which many of the citizens have used to take walks this summer. :)
Sorry, but this letter made me laugh…is she for real? Acting indignant when the nps plan has little to no safety measures? This is a situation that was entirely predictable and it will likely be compounded by Labor Day. It should have been factored into the contingency planning for NPS and as the mayor, she would have broader oversight on all newton-related plans. Instead, on all the SC calls, she is silent or falls asleep. She has no business being in her role and clearly, she lacks all self awareness.
The time for grave concern was weeks ago, when the Mayor should have asked HHS to declare BC’s dorms unsafe for habitation due to COVID, and kept that school from reopening until they had an acceptable testing protocol. The current viral outbreak there was totally predictable, as are the consequences for allowing Newton’s public schools to reopen in any form or fashion prior to daily rapid testing being available system wide.
@mikestriar exactly, the horse is out of the barn on this one! If they test positive, quarantine is tough for college kids. There is no testing at all for nps which is particularly worrisome given that most are asymptomatic.
The colleges it’s all about the money. If they went zoom, parents would balk at the high tuition. So instead they open the schools and then blame the students, who, are gonna due what students do, because, well they’re teenagers.
The student expelled from northeast have lawyered up. I would. Schools are places of higher learning except they’re really places of billion dollar endowments and administration greediness.
“Acceptable” protocol is a Trump protocol; because the minute they start testing, they have to shut down.
School administrators are either being forced into this or are just plain stupid, or both.
Why don’t we just fine the groups of students from the colleges and high schools that are out in groups with no masks or distancing? A few $300 fines and they would be much more compliant and much less a danger to the rest of us.
@C Lewis – a few $300 fines to those who are not compliant doesn’t address those who have now been exposed.
Isn’t there a proverb involving glass houses? Well, Mayor Fuller, consider the glass house that you are specifically responsible for, namely the Newton Public School system, before throwing them yourself! You are responsible as the Mayor and as a member of the School Committee! While you can urge BC to do better than they are doing now, you have led us to nowhere in NPS. We have NO routine survelliance and testing right now, despite pleas from teachers, parents, public health leaders (e.g., Broad Institute) and students. We have NO routine survelliance and testing right now, despite the fact that you have examples to follow in other similarly situated cities. I predict you, Mayor Fuller, will use BC as an excuse one day when in reality you have done more to negatively impact safety and quality of education than anyone else in our city.
@John Darling,
I don’t believe any public school in Massachusetts has yet established robust testing and tracing. Wellesley has been exploring this and has issued an RFP but as of September 5th the Wellesley Public Schools website/blog indicated that they are still trying to get this off the ground.
The Broad Institute did partner with some local colleges to provide testing but it has been suggested that they are likely at capacity. I believe that BU has its own lab and is thus handling processing “in house” so to speak.
Obviously I’d like to hear if there is information to the contrary. But I don’t believe that this has ever actually been on the table for NPS. The city doesn’t have the facilities to administer or process 13,000 or so tests (11,000 students plus 2,000 faculty) nor the funding for ongoing testing which at approximately $100 per test would be in the neighborhood of $1.3 million a week.
@LisaP, you are correct. I think the Broad Institute is already near or at capacity, and I know that BU (my employer) is. It was an enormous, months-long effort, costing many millions, for BU to get our system running. Large private universities have the resources and strong incentives to run surveillance testing. Even a really rich K-12 system would struggle to pay for this, even if they could find a way to get the tests processed quickly.
This is a terrible situation for NPS students, teachers, and parents, but I understand how we got here. Perhaps the solution will lie in antigen testing, which is less accurate but much cheaper and faster.
I do not think that the situation faced by NPS excuses BC. They have the financial resources to have contracted for surveillance testing, as Northeastern did, but chose not to.
Expecting college students to be “compliant” is like me expecting my dog not to chase a squirrel. Sure 1 in 100 highly trained dogs will on command not chase a squirrel – good luck with the other 99.
No. Common. Sense.
While it’s true that no other district in the US has created a plan without issues, nps stands out as Ruthanne and David Fleishman have completely ignored any feedback from teachers (Including those in the working groups) and parents. It seems no one can get a clear answer on simple things like ventilation and the resulting chaos is what has people disenchanted. The fact that mask protocols were only sent last week illustrates how ill prepared nps is. As a leader, you would at the minimum expect Ruthanne and/or David to bring the community together rather than people against each other. It’s ironic she is so indignant about the BC plan when honestly, they can turn the exact criticism around to nps. This could not be anymore JV.
Lainey,
The reason why she is playing up the BC thing is precisely to deflect criticism from her own debacle with the schools. The worse BC looks the more vindicated she is. Instead of presiding over an utter farce of a non-back to school plan she can pretend this was all about an abundance of caution due to big bad BC down the road.
@craig – it is frustrating how she and DF are able to hide their lack of leadership like this…it’s incredibly embarrassing. I have been following the communications from 6-7 districts (e.g., Brookline, Concord, Needham) since March and it is clear we have no leadership. My understanding is that the HHS representative said at the sc meeting last week that the virus cannot be aerosolized because it ‘falls to the ground’ right away. This is the person that is driving the safety precautions.
Craig is exactly right. Ruthanne is using BC as a scapegoat to distract from the terrible decision re: remote schooling. Every public health metric confirmed NPS should have been in person, or at least hybrid. The administration got rolled by union pressure, so Ruthanne is now looking for political cover.
I think the teachers have raised some important concerns that the Superintendent and School Committee are refusing to address openly. To start with, many of our classrooms don’t have adequate ventilation. Joseph Allen, a Harvard public health expert on healthy buildings, has talked about the importance of this for preventing spread of the coronavirus. There have been no assurances that classrooms will have windows that open or else an adequate refresh rate to insure that the air is replaced at least 6 times/hour, nor assurance of air purifiers. I completely understand why the teachers and other staff would be worried about returning to school buildings without those assurances.
Similarly, we know that other nearby districts are working on finding a way to do testing, even if it’s the less sensitive rapid tests. Nor has there been any assurance that the public, or at least each school community, will be notified if there are confirmed cases of COVID-19 in classrooms. How can teachers (or parents, for that matter) be comfortable having kids at school if they might have been exposed and don’t know it and therefore can’t take preventive measures for the rest of the household?
The decision to open schools can’t only be made by community metrics – it also has to include adequate planning for physically safe schools. Otherwise, one sick kid can start a cascade.
@meredith agreed with that. I think the teachers have every right to be worried and this leadership doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. The ventilation is not great and in certain schools, the addition of filters is not possible since they have boilers. Personally, i do not feel comfortable having my kids in school bc we certainly do not know enough about the long term ramifications of this virus. I think it is more worrisome for everyone that kids don’t get as overtly sick as this increases the chances of transmissions. I think everyone would feel a lot better if we knew what the assumptions were in creating this plan so that we could each make an informed decision. As it stands, it is not clear to me that they have put any thought into this plan.
I couldn’t agree more with the other comments that Mayor Fuller needs to devote as much focus, energy and public messaging to the Newton Public Schools plans, as apparently she is devoting to BC’s situation. However, we the residents of Newton, need to provide more direct pressure to the Mayor, School Committee and other elected officials to do so. Tonight, I went to a demonstration at City Hall focused on opening the high schools for hybrid learning. While everyone there was passionate on the issue, there were perhaps 75 people in attendance. For the Mayor to hear the voices of her constituents in a town this size, we need many times that number there day-after-day, to keep the focus and pressure on the school situation. I have heard that there is another demonstration in Newton Center (near the piano) at 5pm tomorrow. I hope to see many hundreds there.
Kudos to the Boston College PR department for hijacking this thread and coming up with this laughable “BC is a scapegoat” narrative to distract readers from the potentially lethal mess that your irresponsible institution has created.
You guys are truly the kings of Boston media, as demonstrated by that puff piece you got Kevin Cullen to write immediately following your depiction in the Spotlight sex-abuse film. Just kidding! My pet goldfish Goldilocks could easily get Kevin Cullen to write a puff-piece about a person of her choosing – it obviously doesn’t take much.
@dank I’m not sure there is anything that we can do…or at least not with traditional tactics; they are ignoring everything and are peddling this narrative that every district is having issues and parents/teachers are just whining and expecting a perfect plan.
We are not minimizing the BC situation but this couldn’t have been anymore predictable. Some of us brought up this exact issue with Ruth Goldman this summer so the letter is a farce. Ruthanne is the mayor and the very least she could do is make sure the BC and NPS plans can co-exist and pressure test the plans. Instead, she provides zero value at the SC meetings. It is shocking that she chose to take a pass when given the chance to ask questions during the SC meetings – she couldn’t even pretend if only to sound remotely interested?
Will there be a time when the greater and edified population can recognize we can’t force-feed what was into what is? This pandemic has provided some remarkable commentary about how humans function.
Dan K:
Thanks for going out to the demonstrations. I’ll attend this evening.
Unfortunately the high school kids in my neighborhood are happy to gather and party but not show up and force the city to change course.
The Mayor has failed NPS and now she is concerned about BC. Get a plan to open the high school now-
First of all, opening colleges at all at this point makes no sense. Not to let young adults off the hook, but most college kids drink and mingle beyond all reckoning, and if they are living in dorms and apartments, the result is inevitable. Look at the explosion of Covid cases on campuses around the country, which then spreads to adjoining communities. The universities should rely exclusively on remote learning, whatever its shortcomings.
As for the Newton schools, were I not retired, I’d dread teaching inside this school year. I just biked by the pavilions alongside Mason Rice, set up apparently for teaching outside. That seems promising except that this morning it was 54 degrees and windy, and ball point pens barely work in those conditions. Generally speaking, though young children are less prone to get the coronavirus, they still can spread the disease. Sadly, elementary and special education teachers around the country are already starting to die.
Imagine the risk faced by the high school staff. All of us have seen teenagers socializing in the parks without either wearing masks or keeping their social distance. Threatening these teenagers with fines for these transgressions would not work, in my opinion.
In brief, when it comes to education during the Pandemic, no easy answer exists.
BC students and staff are really unhappy with how things are being handled there and feel lied to. There’s no walk-in testing, their “contact tracing” is a joke (which is why Newton and Boston are taking it over), and dorm RAs were lied to about how often they’d be tested, among other things. This isn’t just a matter of college kids being college kids. Students and staff who want to stay safe are finding it impossible.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/education/2020/09/14/we-were-lied-to-students-criticize-boston-college-over-lack-of-transparency-around-covid-19
It’s surprising that colleges are opening but this was not exactly a surprise. If they test positive, not sure they will quarantine effectively either. I have always been surprised that they followed through with the idea of the tents. I would worry that it would be a logistical nightmare to make sure the kids don’t cross paths with others plus, it’s not exactly the safest. Why did we bother implementing safety measures and training kids for school shootings to reverse course so quickly? There may be good mitigation strategies but the lack of transparency suggests that there aren’t any.
One issue that I’ve seen little discussion of is the inherent conflict between contact tracing and college discipline. If Joe tests positive, how likely is Joe to tell the contact tracers of the names of the 20 people he was at a party with last weekend if they all can potentially face serious sanctions from the college.
I’m not sure how to best deal with that conundrum.
@jerry I think that’s the inherent problem with contact tracing….
But seriously, what other options do we have given that petitions, phone calls, demonstrations don’t seem to affect anything? It’s frustrating and I wonder whether there are more drastic measures?
Bob, At BU the test positivity percent for the last few days is .06% and since July 27 it is .09%. They process 3000-5000 tests per day and have administered approximately 104,000 tests. Newton’s positivity percentage for the last 2 weeks (as of last Wednesday) is .16%. I think I would rather be at BU. I wonder what the percentage would be if there was mandatory testing in Newton?
Well, that information gives me hope. If one campus can function without becoming a nexus of infection, then who knows what is possible? I will follow the situation at BU hereafter.
@Lainey – I would not give up and say that demonstrations, phone calls, etc cannot and will not have an effect. I think the issue is one of scale. In a city of 88,000 people, not enough people are showing up at the demonstrations to be disruptive and visible enough to provoke a reaction. Since the School Committee meetings are virtual, the 10 people making public comment each time can’t have their voices amplified by the reaction of others in the room, if in person. It is too easy to click online petitions, and so their impact is diluted. If there were 500 or 1000 people in front of City Hall, or the phone lines were jammed to the point of disrupting the regular course of operations, perhaps the effect would be greater. Maybe there would be news coverage. I obviously do not know the effect, but am wondering…
Rates of positive tests at universities testing everyone multiple times/week aren’t comparable to rates of positive tests in communities where the choice to be tested is self-selecting. If you test everyone in Newton, the positive rates will be lower than the rate for those in Newton who choose to be tested or are requested to do so, since many of those willy be people with reason to believe they might be positive.
Contact tracing at BC was a joke even without the issue of parties since they only had a couple of staff members doing it. Certainly you don’t need students to rat on each other in order to know that teammates, classmates, people on the same floor of your dorm or in your apartment are contacts who should be tested. Yet BC didn’t even test everyone on the swim/diving teams nor staff who worked at the pool.
@dank i hope you’re right but I’m not holding my breath. Based on the response from Fuller and Ruth in the Boston Globe, I feel they will blame this on the situation and how they can’t make everyone happy in a city of 80k+ people. All along, it’s been about giving the appearance of listening to the community and prioritizing equity just to do whatever it is they want to do. I hope I’m wrong but this triumvirate is too arrogant to realize they are way out of their depth
Meredith, I do not agree with your assertion that those in Newton who have been tested had reason to believe they might be positive or close to someone who is. Although I do not know many people in Newton who have been tested, those that I do know were tested for their work or travel. We really have no idea how many asymptomatic people may be wandering around and we do know that kids (all ages) can be asymptomatic and spread the virus. Also, some tests are better than others. Before arriving at college most schools required a PCR test, not the rapid antigen test, which is known to be somewhat unreliable. So, if we have little testing we will not have to worry about higher positivity numbers.
Yet, NPS does not require or provide testing for its faculty, staff, students and other adults that are in the building daily? Where is the logic here, Ruthanne? I would surmise this is optics. I wonder what would be her stance if her children, that went to private schools were current students in the NPS. A 90s hip-hop band proclaimed “C.R.E.A.M.”
@jason there can be testing, but then what? Think about what to do with the results. Teacher is positive- then a substitute? Your son tests positive, but your daughter is negative- does your son get locked in his bedroom and you slide food under the door? Then, do you get tested everyday? Do you go to work? I just think that no one here has thought this through.
The unfortunate result is that the testing is simply going to shut the school down fast. Which is probably a good thing, actually.
Anyone else just notice that Newton has gone from Green to Yellow on the state’s COVID-19 outbreak map?
Was this because of the BC cluster? Or is there a greater outbreak/risk to the general public in Newton that we are just starting to become aware of?
@Phil-No, the data I just looked at that was updated today still has Newton as green and actually has us at 1.9 cases per 100K and a positivity rate of 0.16%. Significantly better than Brookline at this point too. Unless you have other data?
@Rich Frank – people have been thinking about that question for months and there is guidance on how to handle it. In general, if one member of a household tests positive and the others are currently negative, the positive one is supposed to isolate from the rest of the household and the entire household is supposed to quarantine. If a teacher tests positive they need to stay home.
Phil is right, number is at 4.1 and will be higher next week since the number two weeks ago was 1
Yes, the site I was looking at said it was updated but wasn’t. Another interesting thing is the large amounts of testing done in Newton compare To other cities. The positivity rate is still 1/2 the state rate, which is a good sign with the large amount of testing.
Are large amounts of COVID-19 testing currently being done in Newton? If so, where?
The last time I checked, you either had to go to JP (maybe West Roxbury) or the outskirts of Waltham (Exit 28 on 128) to get tested.
Maybe that will change now that Newton in a Yellow zone. Especially with in person learning at all the elementary schools starting again (under a hybrid model).
Phil-Newton is currently reporting 53,757 tests to date. That is about 60% of the Newton population with a 0.46% positivity rate. Brookline has reported 22,430 test or about 38% of population with a 0.50% positivity rate. Fall River with the same population as Newton has reported only 38,000 tests (~43% of population) with a 3.03% positivity. My take away at this point is that the population in Newton is being tested at a pretty significant level. I can’t tell how many are repeats, but overall 60% is pretty high compared to other cities. The yellow designation is only based on rate per 100K. After looking at the totality of the data, I would not be overly concerned with that single metric at this point. If the positivity rate starts to climb, then that along with an increase in rate per 100K would be concerning. Just my two cents on the matter.
Rick,
Yes, they should test. Is there value in quarantining or is this a farce? Can we simply push through this knowing lives will be lost? I am a proponent of prevention. I have beat this drum to tatters: this is a pandemic. We are running a live experiment, wherein my opinion, there are degrees of sheer recklessness. Unless one has worked with segments of the high needs populations, then they can’t grasp, theorize, or understand how this creates fertile grounds for the spread of the virus. Go live the life of a Behavior Therapist at a NPS high school, and then circle back to this conversation. The idea that intelligent, well-learned, and knowledgeable people have the solution is for naught. We are working within foreign circumstances. It is time to accept this and act accordingly.