Cal Poly is paying up to $23,000 for COVID-19-positive students to isolate in SLO hotel
About 20 to 27 Cal Poly students were isolating Thursday in a San Luis Obispo hotel after testing positive for COVID-19, according to multiple sources and the university.
The university is paying for the students’ stay, adding up to roughly $17,420 to $23,500, or about $867 per student for a 13-night stay.
The students are staying at Lamplighter Inn & Suites, located on Monterey Street near campus, according to a source connected to the hotel. They began checking in late last week, and their current reservations last through Nov. 19, according to the source.
Cal Poly is experiencing an outbreak of COVID-19 cases among its student population. From Nov. 3 to Nov. 10, 217 students had tested positive, bringing the university’s total case number to 488 students.
As of Nov. 10, 95 students were isolating on campus along with another 880 in quarantine, according to the university. The university’s COVID-19 website notes that the campus has 103 beds available for quarantine and isolation.
“In effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 related to the recent increase in cases our campus community has seen in the last week, the university needed to use isolation beds in order to quarantine some students who had not tested positive but who were deemed to have been at increased risk of developing COVID-19 after having a significant exposure to someone who had tested positive,” Cal Poly media relations director Matt Lazier wrote in an email to The Tribune.
“Over last weekend and into this week, increased numbers of positive tests among our on-campus student population resulted both in more students needing to isolate and more students who had significant exposure,” Lazier added. “This increased pressure on on-campus isolation capacity led to the need for overflow space off campus.”
The Cal Poly students staying at the Lamplighter Inn are not allowed to leave their rooms or wander the hallways of the hotel, said the source familiar with the matter. However, some have gotten locked out of their rooms and needed assistance, and sometimes those students were not wearing masks, according to the source.
Students are not given regular room service, but their rooms will be disinfected after they leave, according to the source.
Additionally, out of the Lamplighter Inn’s three buildings, Cal Poly students are staying in the building farthest from the hotel lobby, hotel manager Sunil Patel wrote in an email to The Tribune. Students checking in do not go to the hotel’s lobby, but go to a separate, unmanned “check-in table” that has the students’ check-in materials, according to Patel.
When the students move out, their rooms will be professionally cleaned and sanitized by service staff employed by Cal Poly, and the linens will be taken to a third party vendor trained to handle items touched by COVID-19 patients, according to Patel. Those rooms will also stay vacant for two days before another guest can occupy the room, Patel wrote.
Moving students who have tested positive for the coronavirus to off-campus housing worries some health experts because of the apparent lack of planning on behalf of the university, said Candace Winstead, a Cal Poly professor whose expertise lies in immunology and public health research.
“Bed availability on their coronavirus dashboard did not show that the campus was running out of isolation beds as there were still 103 beds available as of Wednesday,” Winstead wrote in an email to The Tribune. “This lack of transparency about what is happening with the outbreak on campus can lead to a breakdown of trust within the campus community, which is the last thing we need in this situation.”
Winstead also raised concerns about the virus spreading into the off-campus community because of the students living in the hotel.
“Maintaining isolation can be taxing, and there have been reports of lack of compliance,” she wrote. “Off-campus sites may be more logistically challenging, and I very much hope that there is appropriate support of and oversight for the off-campus students in isolation to keep everyone safe.”
In a campuswide communication on Thursday, Keith Humphrey, Cal Poly’s vice president for student affairs, said that students should consider leaving campus early if possible.
Students officially start leaving the San Luis Obispo campus on Nov. 20, as finals are fully virtual this year. Fall quarter ends Dec. 5, with winter break lasting from Dec. 6 to Jan. 3.
Humphrey advised university students to “consider leaving town early” if they can. He also suggested that students “get tested on-campus before leaving,” “not travel until you receive your test results” and “self-quarantine before going home.”
“Like you, I want everyone in our community to remain healthy and safe so that you can enjoy the break and avoid unintentionally spreading COVID-19 to friends, family and loved ones,” Humphrey wrote in the campuswide communication.
This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 2:32 PM.
