At some of the schools where breakouts happened that I know about, the students were not doing anything wrong per that institution’s rules. Covid cases are going to happen, even if people are following the rules.
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I agree that some COVID cases on campus are unavoidable in an area surrounded by the virus. The question is then whether a college is able to keep the number of cases at a “manageable level”. By “manageable level”, I mean the college can contact-trace and isolate/quanrantine the infected/potentially infected. Once that becomes impossible, what can we expect the college do other than going remote?
There is such a wide array of college practices with regard to covid. Some have many restrictions, some have very few, and everything in between. I am certain they all are not contact tracing, nor are their county/state health departments.
Some are doing surveillance testing, most aren’t…the CDC guidelines say not to do surveillance testing in healthy, highly vaccinated populations…which describes many college campuses.
For those schools that aren’t testing, how would they even know there is a breakout and/or the extent of the breakout? Why would students volunteer to get tested if they know it could possibly lead to restrictions?
What is a ‘manageable’ level of cases? Who defines that? I haven’t seen one college say once we reach X positivity rate and/or X number of cases we do X, whether going up in cases and increasing restrictions, or down in cases and relaxing restrictions. This is the 4th semester that colleges are dealing with this, and for them not to have transparent policies in place is ridiculous. Some seem to be flying by the seat of their pants right now, and I don’t even understand how that can be.
Obviously, I have more questions than answers, and I am not advocating for a certain set of behaviors or policies. It is difficult for everyone, and students will go to the colleges that have the policies they desire…safety and lots of restrictions like Amherst, or like there is no pandemic at Virginia tech (just to take two examples).
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Big universities can’t really do much except mandate masks (at least indoors), and provide a way for students who have to miss classes to make up the work (online, notes from friends). Boulder County just reinstated the mask mandate at all indoor public spaces so stores, restaurants, the mall, rec centers, movies. I’m not sure it applies to private offices but most are enforcing it. All medical places and schools (k-12) have mask mandates.
Not much more CU can do. Only 1/4 of students live on campus so most are out and about in the community every day. Testing weekly would do nothing because there is no way to trace every contact, every bus a student was on, every person in a 100 person class, everyone at the library or in a certain cafeteria.
I don’t think there’re any CDC guidelines specific to colleges. Whether the colleges test students or not, at some point, the effect of a breakout will make itself known. Would it then be too late to do anything about it? Some students may not like what Amherst is doing, but those initial restrictions may keep classes at Amherst in-person, while classes at Virginia Tech may have to go fully remote. Which outcome do we really prefer?
CDC has published many guidelines for colleges: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/colleges-universities/index.html
I don’t understand how a breakout will make itself known (in a highly vaccinated community) when the vast majority of breakthrough cases are asymptomatic or mild.
Fundamentally, the US’s failures wrt the pandemic are many. The main one that has me and many others beating our heads against the walls is the lack of rapid testing. People in the UK test EVERY MORNING before they go to work, with free tests they can pick up at pharmacies and other outlets. Kids several times per week for school. It isn’t hard, really. Testing is our way out of this.
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Thanks for the link on CDC guidelines.
If there’s a large breakout, I’d think it’d affect not only the vaccinated and healthy students, but also others who may not be as healthy, or are unvaccinated for valid medical reasons, or those under 12 who live with faculty/staff/grad stduents.
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Virginia Tech is requiring students to be fully vaccinated. They are also requiring masks indoors. Those protocols are pretty typical this semester at most colleges.
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Wasn’t this Mina’s point, even before vaccines? I.e. if everyone had a supply of inexpensive quick-result tests that they used before going any place where they may expose others (work, school, store, team/group sports, religious services, etc.) and self-quarantined if they got a positive result, there would be much less spread.
Right now, testing in the US is still expensive (or too expensive for approximately daily use), inconvenient, and/or slow to give results.
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Do you think people who won’t get vaccinated will do a self test every morning, and actually stay home if they get a positive result?
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Is that true for college students too? Just curious because my D has friends in uni in Scotland and there’s pretty much no testing going on.
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To a large extent, Delta’s high R0 is basically forcing a policy choice that no one wants to admit, because vaccination alone will not stop it (bring Re below 1), leaving only policy choices that are bad:
They have to show the test at work, on an app. The US is woefully behind in testing technology.
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I don’t know about college students in the UK
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I think cheap, rapid testing isn’t supported by the government and media because it would show our numbers to be even worse than they are and they’re afraid of the impact on the economy and in person education, among others.
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The cheapest at home rest I’ve heard of in US was Bianax that was on Amazon @ 2 tests for $20. Now they’re sold out and cvs has same thing did $25 for 2 tests. In Europe, it’s said to be pennies or $1 per test. That’s what they said it would be in us but never happened.
I’ve never had a test, nor H nor my mom. We’ve never had any symptoms or been exposed. We have the app that’s supposed to notify us if anyone we have been near tested positive. So far, have never been notified and only know of a few people that have ever tested positive, none of who I had seen for months before or since their positive test.
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To be fair, we don’t go out much—only to buy groceries and sometimes pick up Rx. We have basically become hermits. Once in awhile we do dine outdoor dining at restaurants.
We all have our worries. Fortunately, with epidemiological guidance to help form the university’s policies, we can be assured that the academic mission won’t be compromised due to fears and “what-ifs.” It’s important to understand here that not all university campuses are similar. A large state flagship might have a different student and faculty makeup from, say, a smaller private university across many characteristics, including proportion of members whose first language isn’t English, course size and format, institution’s investment in proper ventilation and cleaning protocols, vaccination percentage, etc. And then, there are the particulars: not all courses are lecture-style, microphones can’t correct for different pronunciations or accents, speaking more loudly can be interpreted as insulting or even aggressive, and so forth. Being heard or understood is central to fulfilling the course goals, regular voices ensure a civil conversation, and everyone in the class is grown-up enough to figure out how to make this work without engaging in undue risks. Fortunately, institutions of higher learning across the country have access last year’s experience at their and other campuses, so they should be able to figure out how to configure safe Covid policies that don’t interfere with the primary goals of teaching, learning and research.
This is why it’s probably better to consult with a team of human experts than run a computer model available to anyone on the internet. The latter might work if one has no tailored guidance, but the former will take into consideration the epidemiology of the virus on each campus and in the surrounding area. Last year’s experience, assuming that the institution had students on campus (not all did), will serve as a guide. Infectious disease experts both at the various universities and in the surrounding localities are tracking state-wide and local infection spread. But each campus will also have distinct attributes from others, so a “one size fits all” county-wide recommendation might be inappropriate and hinder the academic mission of the university.
Although there are limitations in the study, it appears having windows open can assist in mitigating the amount of virus in a room.
Opening a window could reduce the amount of coronavirus in a room by half, according to a new observational study of infected college students in an isolation dormitory at the University of Oregon.
The study, which was posted online, is small and has not yet been published in a scientific journal. But it provides real-world evidence for several important principles, demonstrating that the virus spreads from infected people into the air in a room; that the more virus they’re carrying, the more virus builds up indoors; and that both natural and mechanical ventilation appear to reduce this environmental viral load.
“Ventilation is one of the most important mitigation strategies that we have at our disposal,” said Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, who led the research and directs the Institute for Health in the Built Environment.
The researchers studied 35 University of Oregon students who tested positive for the coronavirus between January and May. All students subsequently moved into single rooms in a Covid isolation dormitory for a 10-day isolation period.
The scientists placed Petri dishes in each room and used an active air sampler to trap aerosols floating around the air. Several times a day, they also swabbed various surfaces in the room, as well as students’ noses and mouths.
Then they used P.C.R., or polymerase chain reaction, testing to determine whether the virus was present in each sample and, if so, at what levels.
The data confirmed that there was a clear link between the amount of virus that students were carrying and the environmental viral load. As the amount of virus in students’ noses and mouths decreased over their isolation period, so did the amount of airborne virus.
“There was a significant correlation between the nasal samples and the air samples in the room,” Dr. Van Den Wymelenberg said.
The viral loads in the rooms were higher, on average, when the students were symptomatic than when they were symptom-free, although the scientists stressed that even asymptomatic students emitted plenty of virus. Several self-reported symptoms, including coughing, were specifically associated with higher environmental viral loads.
The researchers also calculated the mechanical ventilation rate for each room, and asked students to report how often the windows were open. They found that viral loads were about twice as high, on average, in rooms that had the window closed more than half the time.
“Ventilation is really important, and I think we’re just starting to realize how important it is,” said Leslie Dietz, a study co-author and researcher at the University of Oregon.
The study had several limitations, including the fact that it included only young adults and that symptoms and window data were self-reported. The researchers also noted that they did not measure how much of the virus present in the room was viable, or capable of infecting other people.
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I must say I’d never heard of an accent-corrective microphone before.
I’ll say only that I hear even Nature’s on the internet these days, and that if a model is good enough for UCSF’s Dept of Medicine chair, I don’t mind using it as a rough guide. Given all the hard volunteer work a group of well-qualified people have put in, too – specifically to make it available to the public, rather than try to retain exclusivity, which isn’t unusual anymore – I don’t think it deserves a snub. More broadly: viruses are as egalitarian as it gets: they don’t mind emollient admin wishfulness or muscular goals or appeals to higher powers or tuition rates. They merely drift and find next host. As far as they’re concerned, a room is a room; a mouth is a mouth, a nose is a nose is a nose. At that point the only questions we have left are to do with the info we have about vaccines, masks, demographics, and local ICU space. The best known way we have of keeping your own infection from spreading? Isolation, but barring that, a good mask, kept on the face so it can do its job.
And with that, I exit this strand before it turns into debate.