Yep - this has been part of the advice since last year. The problem is it gets less effective as the amount of virus necessary to get people good and infected drops. So, for instance, that outbreak in Marin happened in a classroom that had cross-ventilation – open on two sides – and had a teacher who was taking off her mask only to read aloud; kids were well-distanced (for last-year’s virus, not for delta, which plays by different rules). The teacher didn’t know she was infected. And, of course, masks aren’t magic, especially if they’re made of cloth and you’re hanging out in a bunch for a long time, and you’ve got a highly infectious airborne virus and a room full of unvaccinated children.
I talked to the Housing coordinator responsible for isolation/quarantine housing here; apparently we’re back up to the use we saw in January. But if no one talks about it, everything looks fine. After all, you’re specifically not seeing the people in those rooms. How long will it take them to get better, and how sick are they? We’ll have no idea about any of that, either.
Just checked St.Andrews in Scotland. They are asking students who have no symptoms to self test twice a week using ACON Flowflex nose-only tests. The test results will show after 15 minutes.
There are students from 140 countries and 97% of the students arrived at the school this week having at least one vaccine shot and 74% are fully vaccinated. There are no vaccine mandates permitted by the Scottish government for students to attend uni so they’re getting very good voluntary compliance. The cases in Scotland are very high right now even with pretty good vaccine uptake.
I wish more universities and colleges in the US were implementing similar surveillance testing.
Wow. I feel slightly less Jules Verne helmet now: that’s exactly the protocol I sent my daughter off to school with, except Binax (also nose-only antigen) and not Flowflex.
Abbott’s BinaxNOW at home tests are in short supply. This is affecting colleges right now, including those who are using the tests as a surveillance tool, and/or those who were planning on having close contacts test on their own.
Long article, but here’s the beginning:
For weeks in June and July, workers at a Maine factory making one of America’s most popular rapid tests for Covid-19 were given a task that shocked them: take apart millions of the products they had worked so hard to create and stuff them into garbage bags.
Soon afterward, Andy Wilkinson, a site manager for Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer, stood before rows of employees to announce layoffs. The company canceled contracts with suppliers and shuttered the only other plant making the test, in Illinois, dismissing a work force of 2,000. “The numbers are going down,” he told the workers of the demand for testing, saying it wasn’t their fault. “This is all about money.”
As virus cases in the U.S. plummeted this spring, so did Abbott’s Covid-testing sales. But now, amid a new surge in infections, steps the company took to eliminate stock and wind down manufacturing are proving untimely — hobbling efforts to expand screening as the highly contagious Delta variant rages across the country.
Demand for the 15-minute antigen test, BinaxNOW, is soaring again as people return to schools and offices. Yet Abbott has reportedly told thousands of newly interested companies that it cannot equip their testing programs in the near future. CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens locations have been selling out of the at-home version, and Amazon shows shipping delays of up to three weeks. Abbott is scrambling to hire back hundreds of workers.
Kind of mind boggling that they’d dismantle production so quickly, given that Delta was already spreading in different parts of the world. Does anyone lament the lack of ability on the part of the people in charge to extrapolate out beyond a few days? It feels like they’re always playing catch up, reacting instead of being proactive. Why did the CDC recommend no testing after exposure?
“ In March, the federal government announced $10 billion to support testing in schools. By April, Abbott had reaped another $2.2 billion in testing sales. The same month, the F.D.A. extended BinaxNOW’s shelf life, originally six months, to a year.
But then the C.D.C. came out with a game-changing announcement: Vaccinated people without symptoms no longer needed to be tested, even after exposure.
“We couldn’t have anticipated what has occurred over the past several weeks,” Mr. Ford told investors on another call, describing “a sharp and rapid decline in demand,” particularly for rapid tests, and dropping the company’s earnings forecast. Abbott later announced a $500 million restructuring plan.
“Are you not thinking that there’s going to be any kind of, you know, resurgence or ramp-up of screening testing in the fall?” Matt Taylor, a managing director at UBS, asked on the call. “What are you to do with all the capacity that you’ve built up?””
India and the UK were surging in the spring and early summer. Didn’t any of these people think it would cross the ocean and come here? Really has me shaking my head about how smart these people are that are in charge.
And delta is re-emerging in the UK, even with their vaccine success.
The UK, on a normalized basis, has fewer cumulative cases than does the US. However, that’s mostly due to the progress of the virus in each country at the start of the pandemic. For the most part, the UK and the US have looked, and continue to look, relatively similar in terms of weekly average infections, including in recent months with the Delta variant. So it’s not clear how daily testing has stemmed the spread of the virus there, or how it will do so here.
The dreaded ‘we couldn’t have anticipated this’ (after Delta ran wild in UK and India)
Now some colleges are resorting to using PCR tests for their surveillance testing, partially because they can’t get rapid tests.
But…PCR tests don’t test whether one is contagious, so some students who aren’t contagious because they had covid X days/months ago will test positive and go into isolation for two weeks, with no option for remote courses.
No wish to debate either. I’ll just say that viruses are egalitarian but not all college students or college campuses are. Academic cultures are distinct, and the smart epidemiology team will take into account the specific culture in forming their recommendations. Of course, a lot depends on the university’s actual goals. Some universities last year seemed to have a primary goal of keeping everyone safe from Covid. I’d argue that this isn’t the primary mission of a university, that working around Covid is a better strategy. But it will totally depend on the institution’s resources, creativity, and dedication to its academic mission including undergraduate education. Not to mention its location, residential situation, and so forth.
Regarding masking, it’s good for universities to rely on the evidence from their own experience last year, if available. Stacked protocols with multiple redundancies are best, so if one has to be removed for a few minutes, the others will still work to contain the virus. Most people know that in the event of a speaker needing to remove their mask for a few minutes in order to be heard or understood, proper social distancing is in order. Sort of like when any of us go out into a larger gathering and someone isn’t wearing their mask, we probably don’t go crowding up next to them but keep our distance. This may be more difficult to accomplish in some classrooms than others. But college kids and professors can get it figured out - it’s probably a relatively easy problem to solve compared to the typical writing assignment or problem set for the class.
Oh I think rapid testing sounds like a great idea but it would be most successful if enforced locally (ie employer, school - with stakeholder approval, etc.). Even then, I wonder how successful it would be in practice. Is there data? I don’t see it from the Mena twitter feed but maybe not looking hard enough. Has he published anything on this (other than news articles)?
My son’s university hasn’t updated their mandatory asymptomatic testing requirements from last year except to drop it for the vaccinated. And it’s always been a 1x/week deal. I suspect that’s because they understand some of the social science behind implementing such a “requirement” - 2x, 3x or daily testing just sounds like a great idea in theory, but everything depends on 1) compliance and 2) people not changing their other behavior (ie increasing exposure risk now that they feel “safe” due to all that testing). No one even tends to bring up that 2nd factor, and yet it will undo some of the good that the stricter testing policy is meant to achieve. I’d love to see some good analysis on this once the data is available.
Where is your source for this? It’s early, and I am only one cup of coffee in, but VT’s dashboard doesn’t look that concerning for 27,000+ undergrads and 9,300 living on campus. They’ve been on campus for almost a month now. Am I missing something on the dashboard?
VT mandated vaccines for students, faculty & staff and has required indoor masking since arriving on campus for move-in (and according to my D, it is vigorously enforced in public indoor spaces). My D lives in a 400-person dorm and is not aware of anyone in her immediate area who is Covid-positive (several of her friends have gone to the health center for various reasons and while sinus issues are prevalent, no one has come back Covid positive). They are following CDC guidelines and doing the best they can do for a very large public university.
There’s a lot of hand-wringing on CC over whether routine testing should be conducted - VT is following CDC guidelines for testing vaccinated people (they do require weekly testing for anyone who was granted religious or medical exemptions). Any student can get a test if they want one (and they are testing, per the dashboard).
There is no shortage of colleges that are doing routine testing (and wastewater testing) and that have limited large group activities. If parents and students are looking for that environment, I wouldn’t be looking at large public universities.
I’m glad VT is doing well. My original comment wasn’t really about VT. VT was used by another poster as an example of a college with an approach diametrically opposite to Amherst, which implemented some of the strictest rules in dealing with COVID this fall. Perhaps we should have used Liberty University instead. I do agree with your comment about the difficulties all large public universities face, which undoubtedly limit their options this fall.
@1NJParent I hear you. Was just wondering if you had heard some thing I didn’t.
I’m sure many colleges are reserving the option to go completely remote from Thanksgiving until after winter break, if they don’t like their Covid numbers.
Many of us took a leap of faith when our 2021 kids picked a college - not really knowing what their full plans would be. I was relieved when VT mandated the vaccine. My D had already received it anyway. None of the other large universities she was considering mandated it prior to students arriving on campus (or since, I don’t think - maybe NC State has). Class of 2022 will have the benefit of having more complete information on how colleges are handling Covid, and can make their decisions accordingly.
I think what is bit confusing is how schools are determining “acceptable” levels of Covid cases. 54 cases at VT is a very small percentage but, since they aren’t testing vaccinated students, you know it’s more. I agree with not testing vaccinated kids but that’s the truth. Each college is deciding who to test, how often, and what level of Covid cases will change up their plans about masking, gathering, remote classes, etc. I wonder what VT is doing about close contact tracing. CDC says vaccinated individuals don’t have to quarantine but should test sometime between day 3 and 5 of when the contact happened.
I’m starting to think that one of the big reasons for the discrepancies in policies is isolation spaces. At many schools now, they’ve told kids they should go home to isolate (especially at big schools that pull mostly from a surrounding area). At colleges that have students from all over the world, they need to have enough isolation space for all positive students and, when that starts to fill up, new measures have to be taken to try to stop the spread.
My fully vaccinated freshman son arrived at college on August 15th and tested positive for COVID on August 31st. He’s now stuck inside in an isolation room until September 10th with no ability to leave. He’s at a school that’s doing weekly testing for all vaccinated students (twice weekly for the 1% of unvaccinated students). While I appreciate the school’s diligence, I’m in shock when I see my friends’ posts of their kids at other schools (UVA, Michigan) as if there’s no pandemic. My son has mild symptoms - mostly just a cough - that wouldn’t keep him home if it was pre-COVID times. Fortunately his roommate never got COVID from him! Such a hard way to start college when others are out enjoying the experience.
Trying to see the silver lining that at least he’ll have lots of antibodies for the rest of the semester!
Well you can contrast that with Liberty who didn’t mandate vaccines or masking even indoor facilities. They are already at an active cases number of nearly 500. I’m sure the true number is also much much higher. I know they recently mandated the indoor masking and even went online for two weeks (paraphrasing) “out of respect for the full hospitals and overwhelmed med facilities.”
I agree that there are likely vaccinated positives with mild or no symptoms who aren’t testing and therefore not being recorded on the dashboard. But on a campus of vaccinated students who are cohabitating with other vaccinated students, and who are wearing masks in the classrooms (with vaccinated professors, who are also wearing masks) and who are also wearing masks in the dining halls and libraries (with staff present who are also vaccinated and wearing masks), and wearing masks when indoors at places off campus as is mandated in the towns of Blacksburg, Christiansburg, State of VA, etc. - at some point I’m not sure there is value to routine testing other than to potentially isolate students who have symptoms equal to a common cold.
I would hope that every family made a thoughtful decision as to whether the risks of being away at college during a pandemic were worth taking (not to mention the countless other risks, health related and otherwise, that go along with the college experience). We were all free to choose whether or not to pull the trigger, based on our belief in the science (or not) and confidence in the leadership of our respective college administrations - and apparently most people said okay, because enrollment was met at most mainstream colleges.
I agree with all of that and I’m pretty annoyed with the parents and kids at my kids’ colleges who basically think all socializing should stop and dining should always be to go. If any particular student is worried about Covid they can take their meals to go and wear a mask 24/7. It’s not reasonable to ask all students to do that.
