The Central Michigan District Health Department has issued an emergency order limiting outdoor gatherings to 25 people.
This comes after the health department has confirmed 98 new COVID-19 cases since the return to school.
“When you bring 17,000 people back, this is what you would expect,” says Shaun Holtgrieve, executive director of the Central Michigan University Student Affairs Office.
Holtgrieve says they’ve spent a great deal of time planning for students return to campus:
“As we learn more, we develop procedures and better practices and we have gotten feedback from students and faculty on what they think is working and not working.”
He says they’re actively working with the health department to mitigate the spread.
So far, Holtgrieve says pleased with the response from students:
“Students are actually working to try in making this work, knowing that for a lot of them, they’ve been away for a long time and they’re grateful to be back.”
Lieutenant Mike Sienkiewicz with CMU police says he’s also happy with what he’s seeing while on patrol.
He says the number of large gatherings is down compared to previous years:
“It’s been encouraging,” says Lt. Sienkiewicz. “The parties have been smaller than what we’ve seen in previous years past and the vast majority of the gatherings have been under 15 people.”
This year, CMU police have increased patrols on an off campus.
“We’ll be out, we’ll be visible. Our approach, as gathering hit that 25 number, will be to ask them to break it up if it gets any bigger than that,” says Lt. Sienkiewicz.
But as cases rise, the Central Michigan District Health Department wants to remind students that we’re in this together.
Health Officer Steve Hall says, “Let’s think of ourselves as part of the community and let’s take these preventative steps and we can mitigate the spread of the virus.”
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