WESTFIELD – After enacting a shelter in place as a result of an increase of COVID-19 cases on campus, Westfield State University announced classes would be fully remote beginning on Nov. 23.

Before the announcement, Westfield Health Director Joe Rouse discussed changes to the Health Department’s interactions with the University and the city’s current challenges during the Westfield Board of Health’s Nov. 11 meeting.

“The state Department of Public Health has taken over the entry of all of those cases into the database so it can be more quickly turned over to the Contact Tracing Collaborative. Our nurses are not doing contact tracing for that so they can move onto other cases in the community,” he said.

Despite not conducting the contact tracing anymore, Rouse said he was in constant contact with Westfield State during its shelter in place.

“The numbers are high, they have issued a shelter in place temporarily in the interest of just getting people tested before there is a mass exodus of potentially infected people going back home to their communities,” he said.

In a press release after the meeting, the university announced it would be going fully remote and students would be moving out from Nov. 17 to Nov. 22 and would not return in person until Jan. 19.

In the release, Westfield State interim President Roy Saigo said his top priority was protecting his students and staff.

“Even though enlisting our months-long contingency planning was always a possibility, this is a difficult decision that impacts our full campus community. But we are at a critical juncture as the health and safety of our campus is our top priority,” he said.

Saigo said that he was disappointed the semester had to change so quickly.

“I regret the collective disappointment these changes for the remaining semester bring to all students and their families, as well as to faculty and staff,” he said.

During the Board of Health’s meeting, Rouse also gave an update on the Westfield Gardens nursing home, which had a spike in cases in recent weeks.

“The timeframe has settled down so it’s not a huge part of numbers this week, although it was a huge part of our COVID-related deaths,” he said.

One of the challenges Rouse said the Health Department faces is pushback from residents when they are conducting contact tracing.

“Right now, that’s not really the case. Right before the governor started to be more restrictive knowing the numbers were going up, we were getting pushback from residents taking great exception to us doing contact tracing. Our staff was getting yelled at and given hard time by residents they were trying to contact,” he said.

As of the meeting, Rouse said Westfield was beginning to see the same numbers as it did during the spring.

“The numbers are comparable to what they were in the spring unfortunately, we have more resources and experience with how to quickly extract these people from the community to stop the spread,” he said.

With the numbers rising, Rouse said it will be at least several months before the numbers go back to comfortable levels.

“We’re not anywhere near out of the woods, we need to go a long way and I would imagine it is going to be after the first of the year before I can report comfortable numbers that are manageable and like we got down to before,” he said.

Rouse said that one of his concerns with the rising numbers was that there are some activities currently allowed that should not be.

“There are certain activities that are still allowed under the governor’s orders, but in my opinion some of them are indulgent. There are things allowed under the governor’s orders that people need to step back and think if they need to do that now and maybe do something a little bit more to affect the change,” he said.

Rouse closed the update by saying how difficult the pandemic has been for his team.

“We’re operating very well as a team with mutual support, when we are all together, we lift each other up and forge ahead. Having the support of our staff and team members is just a huge uplift. Personally, it is difficult mentally and emotionally, it is a challenge every day. This is a traumatic situation for our department, and we are doing the best we can to band together,” he said.

He added that it would be difficult to do his job without the staff he currently has.

“We are very lucky with the staff we have right now, I’m glad we are who we are. I’ve seen it in the past where one or two people rock the boat and it really sinks you. This isn’t the Joe Show, everybody has their part and they do it well,” Rouse said.