A Chick-fil-A employee tested positive for COVID-19. As of Sept. 2, the staple restaurant, located in Markley’s at the Center, has been closed to prevent a further spread. Dining Services is following protocols to ensure the safety of students and staff.
According to an email to students sent on behalf of Sodexo, the employee is isolating at home.
“Through contact tracing, any employee exposed has been tested and we have determined that no students were exposed. All positive cases have been reported to Sodexo, our Winthrop Contract Administrator, and the South Carolina Department of Health,” Dining Services General Manager, Helen Hoban, said.
Throughout the pandemic, Winthrop Dining Services has taken measures to protect the Winthrop community.
“Everybody is masked outside. If you go back in the kitchen now where they’re preparing food, everybody’s masked… Hand washing, first, last and always and then we do a daily check in the morning when they come in and several times, of course, throughout the day when the managers goes around asks, ‘What’s going on? How you feeling?’” Hoban said.
Winthrop Dining Services Marketing Director Aba Hutchison said extra measures for employees and students have been put in place to ensure sanitation in the food-handling process.
“In the kitchen and everything like that they’re still wearing masks. And we make sure of course, that they’re still wearing gloves, hand washing of course, that happens normally, but it happens more frequently. And we make sure that the utensils are changed even more. Right now we’re still making sure that even for the students that their gloves are worn. So for example, we are having some areas phased out of self serve, but we’re still making it that students had to wear gloves while doing some self serve activities,” Hutchison said.
Completing full contact tracing and notifying employees who were exposed to COVID, Winthrop Dining Services was able to get all of the employees tested. After getting the results back, there was one person who tested positive. As of Sept. 10, there are still two employees that Winthrop Dining Services is waiting to hear back from.
“The outbreak and COVID and Chick-fil-A came on really fast. [An employee] called in sick, so we arranged for [them] to have a rapid test, which they can do at the lab here in town, and we were able to get [their] results within 40 minutes. So that’s why everything happened so quickly last week because [they were] a mid-shifter. Everybody in the morning was exposed to [them] and everyone in the evening was exposed to [them]. So that’s why we had to shutdown Chick-fil-a immediately,” Hoban said.
In the meantime, Chick-fil-A has been cleaned and sanitized to their COVID protocols so there is no opportunity for anybody to get anything residual. However, it is not a requirement to get tested often, nor is there a requirement to get vaccinated.
“As far as I know, right now if you are vaccinated and you test negative, then you don’t have to quarantine. But if you’re not vaccinated and you test negative, there’s a period of time that you start the quarantine which is also what has affected Chick-fil-A,” Hutchison said.
While Winthrop Dining Services strongly encourages its staff to get the vaccine, the choice remains optional. They make sure that employees are as socially distanced as possible and it is no longer allowed to eat in crowds during lunch breaks.
“Everyone was tested after this event. The state of South Carolina does not require vaccines or testing on a regular basis; neither does Sodexo…We follow our campus’ leads on things like that. So no they don’t. If anybody comes in and feels remotely not well with any of the symptoms, they are sent out immediately and asked to go get a test. I haven’t had anybody refuse to get tested. We have had people that have chosen not to get vaccinated. It’s everyone’s personal decision,” Hoban said.
Since the beginning of the school year, Dining Services has made a few changes to its self serve protocols.
“We’ve made some more things available to students but with gloves and tongs. And I will say that students… about 19 out of 20, are really good about it. And we have one occasional off wetlander that doesn’t, but pretty much everybody’s using gloves, or taking a napkin and tongs and maybe being cautious but we’re going through a lot of gloves, which I think is a positive thing. And every time I pretty much annoy a lot of students because every time I walk by and see somebody using a glove, I stop to thank them for doing that for us,” Hoban said.
Since the shutdown of Chick-fil-A, The Grill has become many students’ new go-to restaurant at Markley’s as well as the pop-up events that have been implemented.
“[B]ecause of Chick-fil-A being down, [Sodexo] wanted to make sure that there was something because you couldn’t have Chick-fil-A. I want you to have something special every night. And that will continue until we get it back up and running, which hopefully will be next week,” Hoban said.
“We’re pushing hard to get things as close to normal as we can again, but it’s just the priority was…making sure you guys were safe. Employees are safe. And then we tried to add something over there to give something back. So you had some kind of special thing because you didn’t have Chick-fil-A,” Hoban said.
