The Tufts Daily

COVID-19 positive Tufts students are being sent to the Homewood Suites hotel in Arlington for isolation as the Mods neared their full capacity last Tuesday. Patrick Collins, Executive Director of Media Relations, revealed how capacity and maintenance issues in the Mods lead Tufts to assign COVID-19 positive students to an alternative isolation location.

Tufts experienced one of its most unpredictable periods of the pandemic last week, as cases soared to record-breaking highs on the Medford/Somerville campus in what can only be attributed to the highly-infectious omicron variant.

As COVID-19 infection rates start to decline in Massachusetts, Tufts and other Boston-area universities have seen a relaxation of restrictions to academic and social activities.

COVID-19 cases are finally going down at Tufts following the largest spike since the start of the pandemic. Cases have been cut nearly in half over the past week on the Medford/Somerville campus, falling in line with declining numbers across the county and the state.

Tufts updated its masking and testing guidelines for the spring semester in an email sent to the Tufts community on Jan. 2. The email announced that cloth masks are no longer permitted on Tufts’ campuses.

Classes will be conducted virtually through Friday, Jan. 24 for students in the Schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and The Fletcher School.

Positive cases and isolation numbers have seen a slight rise since last week. The Medford/Somerville campus reported 19 new cases on Friday. The seven-day trailing average number of new cases on the Medford/Somerville campus was 19.29 on Feb. 11, up from 17.57 the week before.

Student Life sent out a campus wide email informing the Tufts community about the rise of seasonal illnesses as well as cases of norovirus, influenza, mono, and strep throat on November 5th.

The Voices of Tufts Diversity Experience, a two-day program designed to introduce high school seniors to the diversity and community at Tufts University, was hosted via Zoom from October 16th-17th.

The Tufts Hong Kong Student Association (HKSA) has traditionally been a student organization with a rigorous application process, but some suggest that culture clubs should be open to anyone in the Tufts community.