OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ) – UW-Oshkosh is finishing up move-out procedures for students, and will move straight into cleaning and preparation to potentially host overflow patients from local hospitals. But as those steps are taken – university officials are still waiting for further details from state agencies.
“These are clearly unprecedented times for all of us,” says Chancellor Andrew Leavitt, “As soon as we possibly can, we’re going to finish the move-out procedures – and then we have to get into the cleaning. That is most likely going to take a few days. So again, we’re going to work with them on their timeline.”
If local hospitals begin to run out of beds, UW Oshkosh is preparing to open the doors of residence halls to house mild cases and quarantine patients. While state officials would ultimately decide which halls would be utilized, Leavitt expects Horizon Village and Gruenhagen Hall/Conference Center to be the main housing sites.
“If, in fact, there is an overflow of people from the hospital that would need to be housed. And of course, we are certainly stepping up to this. We are a state facility and we want to be good stewards of those assets,” Leavitt says, “We would be housing the more mild cases of people who might be ill or also people who need to be put into quarantine. We anticipate these being local patients for the most part.”
While the university has to brace for the worst, they are not expecting to fill every room on campus at this point.
“The campus can house 3,000 students, but we’re not anticipating anything like that. We’re looking at maybe a single residence hall to do that, so we’re looking in the vicinity of 100-200 rooms. That sort of magnitude,” Leavitt says, “Patients will be local. Local to me is the Fox Valley. We’re here to support the local hospitals in the case that there are overflows from our local medical facilities – that’s what would be moved into these facilities.”
The school also called for students nad employees to volunteer to help. Replies flooded their inbox within a matter of hours this weekend.
“In just a few hours, we were able to procure over 100 people who were willing to help out. It’s sort of a testament to what we’re all doing these days, and we have to come together as a community in order to beat this.” Leavitt says, “It was over one-hundred, and a majority of those were students.”
In particular, Leavitt asked for volunteers with experience in health care or infectious diseases, also those with experience in case management and data entry. UW Oshkosh also ranked 54th in the top 100 public nursing schools in the country, but it’s unclear how many volunteers are associated with that program.
The UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee campuses are expected to take similar measures regarding their residence halls.
