Funnelle Hall to be used for COVID-19 Quarantine Rooms

As the SUNY Oswego campus moves from baseline COVID-19 testing to aggressive surveillance testing, President Deborah F. Stanley announced on Monday (Sept. 7) that Funnelle Hall will be used to house additional students who may need to be moved into campus-supported quarantine rooms.  Funnelle Hall was recently renovated and slated to be offline this semester.  It contains 208 rooms, each to be used as single rooms for students who need to quarantine.  

“We are significantly increasing ongoing on-campus testing immediately,” said President Stanley.  “I have charged the SUNY Oswego campus to continue administering saliva-based testing for the rest of the semester as we move from baseline testing to aggressive surveillance testing.  Such continued testing will support our ongoing efforts to monitor and protect all members of the SUNY Oswego community.”

Since the college began the intense effort of baseline testing on August 12, with the active involvement and support of our partners at SUNY Upstate Medical University, SUNY Oswego has conducted nearly 6,000 tests of our students upon their initial arrival to campus and at numerous testing sites on campus over the past two weeks.  As of 4:30 p.m, on Sept. 7, the college reported a cumulative total of 36 confirmed positive cases (since it began testing on Aug. 12), as detailed on the SUNY Oswego’s COVID-19 dashboard, which is updated daily to provide current information on the health and safety of the campus community.  

In a message to the campus community on Monday, President Stanley shared that “Despite the rise in cases this weekend, we have a very low infection rate and are faring better than many other campuses across the state and around the nation at this time.  Testing helps us identify COVID-19 on our campus so that we can begin care for those who test positive, and take swift action to limit the spread to others.”

President Stanley added, “We are closely monitoring results daily and taking appropriate action in consultation with the Oswego County Health Department.  Residential students who test positive are moved to campus-supported isolation rooms, and residential students who may have been in close contact with those who have tested positive are moved into campus-supported quarantine rooms.”  

SUNY Oswego is also working with the City of Oswego and a private engineering firm to analyze our wastewater discharge to provide us the ability to identify traces of COVID-19 in our wastewater as another monitor for campus and community health.