Update from College Secretary to staff

1 April 2020

Dear colleagues

I hope that you and your families are continuing to keep well and safe. We are now into our third week of a college closure and College staff are almost entirely working from home. I would like to thank you all for making this extraordinary transition possible.

The Provost, Dr Patrick Prendergast gives an excellent overview of the effects of COVID-19 on the College community and how we are reacting to it in his address which can be viewed here.

In the event that you receive a request via email from an external or internal party regarding a request for resources of any kind regarding support due to COVID-19, please email COVID-19SupportRequests@tcd.ie. The request will be reviewed by the Major Emergency Management Team (MEMT) while research and medical/HSE specific requests will be considered by the Dean of Research and Dean of Health Sciences respectively. This will ensure that a central repository is maintained and we as a university can respond in as efficient a manner as possible to all requests.

A HSE contact tracing centre is now up and running in Tangent in the Trinity Business School. Training has been provided by the Defence Forces army cadets to Trinity volunteers. Thank you to Prof Orla Sheils, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and colleagues in Estates and Facilities and IT Services for facilitating this important development as the fight against COVID-19 continues.

Also this week the counting of votes in the election to Seanad Éireann is taking place. You can watch live coverage of the count and see the results here.

Looking after your physical and mental health is important at the moment. You can contact the College Health Centre by phone on  01-896 1591 or 01-896 1556 (9.30am-12pm and 2-4pm, Monday-Friday). College Counselling  can be reached on student-counselling@tcd.ie to request a call back and the Chaplains can be contacted at chaplain@tcd.ie to request a call back too.

Please look at the supports for staff and students to help you stay healthy and manage your time during the Covid-19 university closure here. 

The Trinity web page here has Frequently Asked Questions. If you have a query which is not answered in the FAQs, please email coronavirus@tcd.ie and our dedicated team will respond to you.

Kind regards

John Coman
Secretary to the College