FITZWILLIAM IN A PANDEMIC: THE FIRST NINE MONTHS “Unusual”, “Extraordinary”, “Unprecedented” ...we quickly ran out of adjectives to describe the period we are now living through. Our collegiate way of life is seriously challenged as we endure lockdown, social distancing, face coverings and PPE. We have learned new words like Furlough, R-number and others have taken on new usage, such as “I will Zoom you”. In this reflection on the first phase of the pandemic, former Bursar and Honorary Fellow, Andrew Powell, looks back over how far we have come...
When we first heard at the beginning of January that a new virus had broken out in Wuhan in China it all felt very far away. We marvelled at the Chinese ability to lock down an entire city with a population of millions and reflected that such a strategy would never work here. Few appreciated the extent of the learning in Asia that had followed the outbreaks of swine flu in 2009-10 and particularly SARS in 2002-03. By the end of January it suddenly started to become real at Fitzwilliam. The University’s Advisory Committee on Communicable Diseases (ACCD) issued travel advice to those travelling to and from affected areas - first Wuhan and then very quickly the rest of China and many countries in south-east Asia. Within the College, Dee Williams, the College Nurse was quick to appreciate the significance of the virus, and we found ourselves making contingency plans for students who had to “self-isolate”. The first cases in the UK were reported at the end of January - two Chinese tourists who had come from Wuhan; on the 8th February a ski party in France was the source of several infections including a party from Brighton, and then by the 23rd it was clear that there was a major outbreak in Italy. Coronavirus, shortly to be named COVID-19, was on our doorstep, and at the beginning of March the first case in the UK which could not be traced to a link with foreign travel was announced.
THE FIRST WAVE ARRIVES By early March, as the pace quickened, the flow of confusing information from different sources was becoming very difficult to manage, so we took the decision to convene the “Gold” team of the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) on 5th March. This consists of the Master, Senior Tutor, Bursar, Domestic Bursar and those Heads of Department most directly involved in managing the crisis. Through March and the first week in April we met daily by telephone. The BCP log is a daily record of the issues we discussed. Government advice began to tighten with the Prime Minister’s speech of 12th March, the same day that we reported our first self-isolating student in Fitzwilliam. At this point the prospect of students returning home at the end of the Lent term (21st March) became real. Varsity reported on 13th March that Trinity
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