Jesus College detailed in an email sent to all students last night (30/10), that the College for the next two weeks will be “making changes to some key services to keep everyone in our community safe.”

The email in particular highlights the need to “further minimise the risk to staff and Fellows, by segmenting each group and reducing interaction between them.”

These new changes include seating in the cafeteria being segmented with “fellows and staff members continuing to eat in Upper Hall” while staff will further be “able to reserve a table in Hall.” Formal Halls will continue although students must dine in their households only and screens will be “available to shield small postgraduate households.”

Cleaning of students’ households will be suspended.Instead, cleaning packs will be delivered to students from housekeeping, with a free household breakfast in the Roost Cafe available to the household with the cleanest facilities at the end of the two weeks.

Other measures affecting students’ include: no visiting sports teams, party permits being suspended, the gym being limited to four people at any one time and parcel collection from the porters lodge via arrangement. However, all other facilities, including the Roost Cafe and Bar will continue to remain open.

The new measures were introduced at Jesus as a result of the 44 confirmed positive Covid-19 cases since the start of term across 24 households. Several staircases have had more than four positive cases at any one time.

In the email sent to all students, Jesus’s Master, Sonita Alleyne, stressed that “Clearly we need to do more to help households in isolation to minimise the risk of transmission between each other. We also need to reduce current transmission levels between households. So far, we’ve had no instances of transmission from the student body to our staff and Fellows.”

Alleyne encouraged students to “work together to get these numbers under control”, highlighting that “If our numbers start to show a significant improvement over the next two weeks, we may well be able to add flexibility to our visitor policy..I know this is something many students would appreciate.”

Alleyne further warned students of taking a lax approach to Covid-19, suggesting that “anecdotally across universities, it seems some students may be actively trying to catch COVID-19 to ‘get it out of the way’. If any of you should be thinking along these lines, I cannot stress enough how counterproductive it would be. There is emerging evidence that having COVID-19 does not give permanent immunity against reinfection. It would also not stop you having to go back into self-isolation if another household member tests positive or shows symptoms.”

However, Alleyne emphasised that “most importantly, this illness is not something to take lightly. While for many young people it may have few symptoms or after-effects, for vulnerable and older members of our community - our staff and Fellows, and in turn their families and wider communities - it could be debilitating or life-threatening.”

She went on to warn students of the “need to remember how this could affect our whole community. We don’t want to lose this term or year. How every individual behaves will dictate that outcome.”

The Jesus College Student Union President, Aurelio Petrucci, in response to the introduction of these new measures told Varsity: “I think the segmentation approach they [Jesus College] have outlined is the right one”. Petrucci detailed to Varsity that he is “pleased that the College decided to listen to the SU and to others and opted not to go into a College lockdown.”

The imposition of new restrictions at Jesus follows the University releasing their figures from the third week of the asymptomatic screening programme. The third week of the programme detected 38 cases of Covid-19, while symptomatic testing identified 105 positive Covid-19 cases - the total number of cases was only 2 cases higher than found in the programme’s second week.

Despite the relative similarity in the number of cases from the second week to the third week of the University’s screening programme, the total number of cases in Cambridge has surpassed the supposed threshold whereby an area moves into a Tier 2 lockdown.

As a second national lockdown continues to appear increasingly likely, Petrucci stressed to Varsity that “the JCSU remains concerned that the current system of maintaining stronger rules than those of the Government is counterproductive and we have been encouraging them to move fully into line with the government rules for weeks now.”

“However, given the likelihood of a national lockdown next week I think these concerns are somewhat immaterial. We are now more focussed on ensuring that the mistakes of March’s lockdown are not repeated.”