The largest student association in Leiden is suspending the introductory activities due to corona.
Minerva is the first of the major student associations to take the next step in the fight against corona. The association is suspending the introductory activities. The reason is a number of infections within the association. The society on Breestraat will not be closed yet. The problem is mainly with the student houses.
This is also evident from an overview that Sleutelstad was given to Minerva houses of which the association is known to have been diagnosed with the virus. This concerns several buildings on the Rapenburg and the Hooigracht and a further twenty student houses spread across the center. Visitors to a girls’ house on the Haagweg would also have been infected.
That the associations themselves are doing well, became clear earlier this week. Both mayor Lenferink and the highest boss of the university, Rector Carel Stolker, praised them for this, but at the same time warned that the student houses must comply with the RIVM measures much more closely. Parties would be held under the guise of hospiteren. “That is really not possible,” Stolker warned.
The Leiden mayor, who is also chairman of the Hollands-Midden Safety Region, is also on edge now that the number of infections is increasing rapidly. “There are relatively many infections in the student world, but so far we have not found any infections that have been contracted in one of the societies,” says Lenferink, who confirms the image that the infections mainly occur in the houses: “At parties and hospiteer evenings, for example, but there are also students who have taken the virus with them from holidays or activities elsewhere and subsequently infected roommates. ”
In the letter that the mayor sent today to ‘the city’, he also discusses the spread of corona in student houses. He calls the numbers ‘very worrying’.
The cabinet will hold an emergency meeting on Friday. A press conference will then follow. Then it will also be announced that regional measures will be taken. Especially in the student cities. Which that is not yet known.
