Humber College’s administration has taken many steps to keep students safe during the pandemic, and its health measures are paying off.
Amidst the rising number of cases in the neighborhoods surrounding the school, Humber’s enhanced safety measures and guidelines have managed to keep COVID-19 cases related to North Campus six times lower than the provincial rate. According to data available on Humber College’s website, there have been 53 positive cases of COVID-19 related to North campus since the beginning of September. For a campus that has over 19,000 full time students, that makes the COVID-19 positivity rate for North campus 0.27 per cent since the start of the virus.
However, just outside the safe environment the school has created for the few staff and students still allowed to use it, is a COVID-19 daily case count spiking at a significant rate.
Humber College is located in the West-Humber Clairville neighborhood, within the larger electoral district of Etobicoke North. Etobicoke North’s Member of Provincial Parliament is none other than the Premier of the Province; Doug Ford.
Under Ford’s leadership, Ontario has the highest total of confirmed cases of any province in Canada. Winning first place in this race is not a prize, it is a failure to keep constituents safe. Doug Ford’s largest failures in regards to COVID-19 positivity rate are closest to home.
As of January 23, the province has tallied a total of 252,585 total positive cases in a population of 14.57 million people. This makes for a positivity rate of 1.73 per cent since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. That may not seem like a large figure but is the regional data clusters that make up that 1.73 per cent that are cause for concern.
In the last seven days, the city of Toronto accounts for more than a quarter of new cases in the province. According to Toronto Public Health, two of the neighborhoods in Ford’s Etobicoke North riding – West-Humber Clairville and Mount Olive-Silverstone-Jamestown – have accounted for the fifth and second highest total of positive COVID-19 tests in the city. Mount Olive-Silverstone-Jamestown is reporting a whopping 17.3 per cent positivity rate for tests administered during the week of January 10-16.
Humber College’s decisions are proof that keeping people safe while maintaining a high level of operability is possible.
A school with a strong reputation for being an accessible commuter school, Humber’s administration put student safety first and drastically reduced the need for commuting to campus. For the winter 2021 semester, no electives will be taught in person and almost every lab offered by the school has transitioned to at-home virtual learning.
Emily Milic, Humber College’s public relations and communications manager, says that there are also enhanced safety measures and guidelines in effect to protect students and employees in programs like nursing and culinary, where in-person attendance is expected.
“There is a screening protocol in place for each time learners and staff access facilities, required health and safety training for staff, reduced class sizes to support physical distancing, mandatory face coverings and enhanced sanitization of equipment,” says Milic.
Humber’s website does not include any novel coronavirus infection related data from March to September.
“The college was closed in March for the remainder of the winter term and the summer term,” says Milic. “Humber began posting a COVID reporting summary in September to coincide with the start of the fall term, which brought staff and students back to campus.”
Among the staff and students that returned to campus, fourth-year industrial design student RJ Piccioni felt safe in class.
“In my automotive studio class, the room used to build the clay models is secluded and with glass. It’s a small room but our class size was made small so my classmates and I were able to work with a good 8-10 feet between us,” says Piccioni. “If it wasn’t for this special case, I wouldn’t have gone to school to work on the assignments. Our circumstances were perfect.”
Humber has over 33,000 full-time students enrolled within the North and Lakeshore campuses. Milic says, “for the winter 2021 term there are approximately 7,100 students with at least one on-campus component across both campuses.”
Third year behavioural sciences student Andrew Abdulla has not had an on-campus commitment since March.
“I haven’t needed to physically go to school for almost a year while still working towards my degree. It feels like the school has done a better job of keeping their students safe than the provincial government has,” says Abdulla. “Quality public health policy is probably the last thing anyone should have expected from the party that ran on a platform of buck-a-beer and raising highway speed limits.”