MONTREAL -- Bishop's University in Sherbrooke has shut down classes after an outbreak of COVID-19 on campus. 

Fifteen people at the university have tested positive since Nov. 11, the school administration said, without specifying if they were students, staff or both.

They were the first cases since the start of the fall semester, however, the university said.

It decided to institute a short-term school shutdown, suspending most on-campus activities at least until Wednesday.

“We decided late Friday afternoon just to press the pause button for four days to reassess our situation, so we decided to not hold any in-person activities," said Stine Linden-Andersen, Bishop's Dean of Student Affairs and the chair of the university's COVID-19 task force.

"With COVID you don’t really have the luxury of wait and see what happens," he said. "You have to react quite quickly."