I was also reminded by someone who works at Bowdoin that the small number of kids who live off campus are pretty much neighbors of faculty and staff since Brunswick is a small town and most people who work there live there. They know they are being watched. Everyone knows everyone in a small town so they’ve got that going for them.
Not enough supply in our county. We are getting 4,100 doses this week, but they all go to the people who are getting second doses. We also need the support and infrastructure to get shots into people’s arms. Right now, you can only register with the county - can’t sign up with CVS or your local hospital
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I live near Villanova. Our School District is currently hybrid (2 days live/3 days virtual) and community transmission (positivity rate and incidence rate per 100,000) going way down, and hopefully these college outbreaks are self-contained and the students stay healthy with on campus quarantine.
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Me too 
but I do avoid the Giant when school starts lol.
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Agreed and this being the first semester that frosh are on campus probably explains the issue with first-year parties.
My daughter and her roommate moved back to campus at haverford just yesterday- they’ve staggered the move-ins over this week and classes start next week, remote for two weeks and then whatever format the teacher chose. She already got her Covid negative test result back this morning (and she had another about 5 days before heading to campus).
They sent out a warning email to students today telling them to be especially vigilant of the rules as there are problems at Villanova and Penn and they don’t want to follow suit.
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I would be surprised if they quarantine campus. Chatting with my D and sounds like the issue is off-campus frats which Penn has little control over. Campus-wide weekly positivity rate is still less than 2% which is well below CDC safety guidelines for community transmission.
@mountainsoul are those off campus kids getting tested as much as the on campus kids? Do they quarantine the off campus kids in quarantine housing or do they have to quarantine on their own? I think the quarantining on their own does not work. They can’t trust the kids to really stay in their bedrooms and have roommates bring them food for eight days.
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The frats are on and off campus. And it tough to control the kids on and off campus if the school is allowing Greek activities. Same issue with Villanova, they issued guidelines but any Greek life will adversely affect infection rates.
https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/studentlife/be_engaged/fsl/policies/TrainingResources1.html
Yes, all enrolled students, whether on or off campus, are required to test twice a week. Off campus students who test positive must quarantine in their own residence. On campus students who test positive are moved to on campus isolation housing and monitored by Student Health Services and university staff (e.g. RA/GA). I agree the quarantining on their own doesn’t work as well.
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I don’t think it works at all.
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IMO this really depends on the school and on the surveillance and contact tracing system put in place. Some schools really struggled with these - design flaws emerged early-on - but others did fairly well. Most of all it depends on the cooperation level of the students and other community members, how much of a party culture exists at the school, how comprehensive the messaging was about Covid, and so forth. What we learned from the UChicago Med experts is that each university will have a unique epidemiology, so if you can anticipate that and set your surveillance system up well, you stand a much better chance of keeping Covid off campus. And of course, whether self-quarantine works or not will ultimately manifest itself in the infection numbers, both on campus and around the community.
My son’s college tested all on and off campus students twice a week since middle of January. Move-in was smooth and they planned to start some in-person classes 10-14 days after move in. They found a cluster in off-campus housing, caused by a large gathering, by student athletes. 56 cases in total 6000 students. In-person classes have been suspended for about 10 days. Off-campus students who tested positive were moved to on-campus isolation rooms. All student athletes need to take COVID tests every single day now and all other students need to take 3 times a week.
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All I have to say is that, when these off-campus clusters are found, those students on campus following the rules must be livid. Now they have online courses because some fellow students did not care about the community as a whole. I know it’s next to impossible but each college has to figure out how to get through to their students. Get them to understand the stakes.
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UMass Amherst had to switch to remote and pause all sports for 2 weeks due to rising cases: UMass Amherst was just moved to 'high risk' COVID-19 status. Here’s what that means for the campus
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S18 is at another MA school where they moved back on 2/1. They get tested every 72 hours and so far the number of positive cases is low.
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Amherst College was chosen as a vaccination site.
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While Amherst has been chosen as site, they will still have to go by state guidelines on who to vaccinate. Students who don’t fall into into one of the earlier groups are not going to be vaccinated just because their is an approved site on campus. I just got an email from my local healthcare provider saying they are an approved site, but right now they are only open to those over 75 .
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Similar at UChicago. It’s a vaccination site and has administered about 13% of the total doses of the vaccine in the city of Chicago. However, the priority is on higher risk residents of the south side, not the students. Students have not yet been told when they’ll be vaccinated and they were informed in January that this information would not be forthcoming at this time.
Without fanfare, UChicago is removing students from student housing who can’t seem or choose not to follow the very common sense and clearly-explained protocols. Unfortunately there was a larger group this quarter than last (when only two students seemed to be struggling with these common sense rules). They were removed mid-January and are out of housing for at least the remainder of the quarter. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.
When the cluster results from people deliberately making bad choices, then yes - and hopefully there’s a bit of a censure by the rule followers as a result. If someone won’t make the right choice for the right reason, fear of being shamed by your peers might do the trick. Of course, the universities need a reporting system so that those peers can actually turn these infractors in. If everyone feels individually accountable to his/her community, that’ll help a lot! Conversely, anonymity will just lead to more infractions.
However, it should be pointed out that in a large urban area (Philly, Chicago etc) some clusters are going to happen despite precautions. Covid is a highly infectious virus. Off-campus clusters at UChicago have occurred for the most part because people living off-campus have to interact with the surrounding community and its higher rate of infection more than do people living on-campus. It’s unrealistic to expect that there should be no covid among the student population; the goal should be to minimize person-to-person spread and keep it off campus/out of the classroom. Sometimes that means shutting down in-person for a couple of weeks, regardless of how the outbreak started. That’s actually a distinct issue from potential consequences for infractors. This is a serious issue at University of Chicago because the surrounding area - low income, large population of AA and Hispanic - is at very high risk of Covid spread and death. The students are encouraged to think of the wider community, not just the university or their peers.
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Same for many of the vaccination sites in NY state. More than a handful of the state-run sites are at SUNYs, but they are for people in whatever phase the vaccination plan is in.
Still, it will be convenient for the students once they are allowed to sign up for the vaccine. Hopefully it will go fast enough that they will still be on campus!
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