Brock University is making student residences available to frontline health-care workers.
The residences will be able to be used by EMS responders and staff from Niagara Region-operated long-term care homes, in an effort to prevent their families from being exposed to COVID-19.
In a strategy worked out between Brock and the Niagara Region, the University will make residence units in its Village complex available at no cost, for use by health-care staff who have difficulty isolating themselves from their families in their own homes.
To begin with, the program will use 27 of the two-bedroom units, a number that could grow.
Brock has more than 2,400 beds in its various facilities, however the self-contained townhouse format of Village Residence enables occupants to maintain self-isolation without having a shared bathroom.
Village units also have kitchens that allow for self-catering, a key factor since campus dining halls are not currently operating.
When Brock suspended all on-campus classes and exams in late March, the Village townhouses were used to consolidate and accommodate more than 60 students, mainly international students, who were unable to safely get home.
That group is now fewer than 10 students.