Contributed photo
Sous chef Nick Hurwitz-Goodman cooking at a pre-Covid event.
Nick Hurwitz-Goodman, a sous chef at the University of New Haven, was feeling fine. But Covid-19 was spreading fast on campus, so he decided to get tested.
Hurwitz-Goodman tested positive. Now he is stuck at home, uncertain if he’ll develop symptoms, worried about his coworkers who might also have been exposed to the virus.
He’s concerned that UNH and the subcontractor that employs him, Sodexo, aren’t doing enough to protect dining hall staff as the virus has hit 150 students and counting.
“Everyone within my organization [in management] was batting a blind eye to it,” he said, referring to the outbreak. “I felt like I was going insane. I was feeling completely gaslit.”
At the end of last week, an entire UNH dorm, Winchester Hall, was placed under quarantine as university leadership identified the beginnings of an outbreak that stemmed from off-campus social gatherings. On Monday, Oct. 12, the university reported 113 active Covid-19 cases across campus, prompting a temporary switch to online-only classes. Officials announced that, starting Tuesday, dining halls will be takeout-only; but students were still filing in and out of the dining hall, interacting with dining hall workers.
As the Covid-positive numbers climbed at UNH, Hurwitz-Goodman began to push management for more employee testing and communication about the virus. He asked about the threshold of on-campus infection numbers that would prompt dining halls to shut down operations.
There were no meetings with other supervisors about the outbreak to address risks or mitigation steps, he said. “All I wanted was to know the plan.”
On Sunday, he sent an email to seven management representatives: “Currently the number of confirmed cases on campus is at 93 and seems to be doubling every day,” he wrote. “I know I don’t speak only for myself when I say I’m uncomfortable coming to work knowing that there’s an outbreak and not knowing the protocol.”
Hurwitz-Goodman’s manager simply asked to speak over the phone. On the call, “he just completely shrugged it off,” according to Hurwitz-Goodman.
When he later followed up with his manager asking for every Sodexo employee to get tested for Covid, he said he received no response.
When he raised the matter to Sodexo’s human resources department, he said an official told him that it wasn’t Sodexo’s policy to test every employee. Rather, each employee would be responsible for staying home if they developed Covid-19 symptoms.
When he responded that the virus can spread through asymptomatic carriers, he said the HR representative dismissed his concern. “What are you, a scientist?” he recalled her saying.
When asked about this incident, Sodexo spokesperson Enrico Dinges responded that the HR representative “reaffirmed our protocols which are aligned with their training and include practicing social distancing, mask compliance, and hand washing.”
Dinges added that “both Sodexo and the university have taken additional precautions such as modifying the work environments to include physical barriers, one way traffic patterns and distance markers. The ongoing, random testing of their students, faculty and staff, which includes the dining team, continues as standard practice. In addition, our regional leadership has been visiting the campus regularly to monitor compliance and reinforcing our COVID-19 procedures.”
Hurwitz-Goodman said he spends his workdays indoors with about 20 coworkers. In his capacity as a sous chef, he supervises five line cooks and works with dishwashers and front-of-house staff, which includes student employees. “There were student workers as late as Tuesday,” said Hurwitz-Goodman, despite the outbreak.
On Wednesday, a break day for students, the university hosted a food truck festival for lunch and dinner to raise morale. (“It’s backwards to me,” Hurwitz-Goodman said of the event’s timing amid rising infections.) The next day, the university reported 142 active Covid cases on campus. That morning, frustrated with a perceived dismissiveness of the outbreak, Hurwitz-Goodman got a Covid test and found out he had the virus.
He said he feels confident that he caught Covid at work.
“We spent seven, almost eight months being completely paranoid and so diligent,” he added, “and then when [the positive test] happens, it’s just surreal.”
Hurwitz-Goodman, who is also a local artist, said he feels normal for now; he’s still waiting to see if he’ll develop symptoms. He’s relieved, at least, that his partner tested negative for Covid on Friday. He said he is most concerned for his coworkers at UNH’s dining hall, many of whom are unionized through UPSEU Local 1222.
UPSEU spokesperson Matt Geer said in a statement on Friday that “UPSEU Local 1222 is investigating how the transmissions occurred and if there has been full compliance of those on campus with CDC guidelines and the additional protocols implemented.”
“We remain committed to there being a safe and healthy work environment for each of our hardworking members at UNH and we will continue working tirelessly to address this outbreak with the Administration until it is eliminated,” Geer wrote.
Sodexo and the University of New Haven said they will increase the amount of testing provided to employees as a result of Hurwitz-Goodman’s positive result.
Dinges wrote in a statement that Sodexo is “working closely with the University to provide additional testing of employees and will continue to monitor and provide support.”
Doug Whiting, a spokesperson at the University of New Haven, emailed the Independent that only one Sodexo employee had tested positive for Covid-19. As of Sunday, the university’s Covid-19 dashboard reports a total of one active case of Covid-19 among staff; among students, the number of active cases has declined to 86.
“Sodexo has reported to us that the contact tracing conducted by Sodexo has not revealed that any University of New Haven students or employees were close contacts of this individual and did not discover any exposures,” Whiting wrote. “The University has offered to coordinate testing for Sodexo employees this weekend in response to this event.”
This story was produced with financial support from Solutions Journalism Network.
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