September 26, 2020

Dear students, faculty, and staff:

I write to share that last night we received all the results from COVID-19 saliva surveillance tests conducted on Thursday, September 24. One of the tests was positive for COVID-19, and the other 256 were negative. The news of the positive case resulted in the college immediately activating our response protocols.

Contact tracing efforts are underway to identify, notify, and quarantine any individuals who may have been in close contact with the person in the last 14 days. Those individuals determined to be exposed will be contacted directly by staff working on Reed's contact tracing. I expect this news will raise questions related to those efforts. As of last week, we are fortunate to have our new COVID-19 response coordinator and health project manager, Madison Riethman, on board to lead the process of contact tracing and be the central resource for Reed's COVID-19 response. She has already identified the need to boost our communication efforts related to how contact tracing works. While she ramps up those efforts, we welcome your individual questions at coronavirusquestions@reed.edu.

I take this opportunity to remind the community that the college will generally not send a mass email to students, faculty, staff, or parents about each COVID-19 case on campus. I am only communicating broadly about this positive case because I had been corresponding this week daily about test results. From now on, we will resume our regular case notifications and reporting process.

With care,
Mandy Heaton
Public Affairs
Reporting on behalf of the COVID-19 Risk Assessment Group