If hotels are designated as sick wards wouldn’t they then have to have trained medical personnel dealing with all the students? I don’t think people can act as nurses without proper state licensing. This could turn into a very expensive proposition very quickly.
Not everyone who tests positive is sick. Many of these students will be asymptomatic. Others will have minor symptoms. I assume anyone who actually needs nursing care will be in a hospital. I do worry about who will be cleaning the rooms and handling the laundry at these facilities, but I don’t think they are intended for people who actually need medical care.
@TheVulcan wrote:
Wow. That has got to be the most granular housing site I have ever seen. Nothing like it on the Yale site, maybe because Bulldogs don’t really get to choose where they live?
RIce’s plan came out today. I am honestly a bit overwhelmed by all the information and all that is still up in the air. Housing is super confusing. Because Rice has a residential college system most students typically live on campus. All the colleges are different in terms of set up. Those with common bathrooms are decreasing density. Those that are suite style are not. For instance, in my D’s college most rooms are two doubles connected by a bath. One is being used for isolation housing so those students are being moved to the other colleges which means housing has to be redone at all colleges to make room. So there is likely going to be a bunch of kids scrambling for last minute off campus housing - both those who choose not to live at a college other than their own and those who no longer have a room in their college due to lack of space.
D is a little overwhelmed and upset. She’s afraid that based on the restrictions being made about visiting other students (you can only visit on your own floor) and staggered and assigned dining times, she’ll never see her friends. She’s also supposed to live on campus and if afraid that once the dust settles she’ll no longer have a room. It’s not really that these things were unexpected, but it’s more real now.
Here is the message sent to returning students:
https://coronavirus.rice.edu/news/message-dou-returning-students
I’m curious what rises to the level of “medical care”. I assume college will be dropping off food, and students in isolation will be contacted by phone at least daily, probably 2-3x/day, to self-report temperature and other symptoms. Who are the people on the other end of the phone? Nurses? You can be pretty sick and still be able to do these things.
I just think there are a lot of questions and issues surrounding keeping sick kids at a hotel, and what the college’s responsibilities to the kids are, and what their responsibilities are to the workers at the hotel. There’s a lot of new territory that colleges are dealing with.
There was some unfortunate discussion regarding just that earlier in the thread. Content Warning, as the kids say.
ETA: Post #3695 if you want to skip to it.
Yale students absolutely choose where they live, after the First Year. They are assigned to a residential college and room and suite for the first year, but then they participate in Room Draw. Rising seniors have first shot, then juniors, then sophomores. Terrible schematics for each floor in each building exist, and students will sometimes visit suites they are thinking of choosing, if they know someone in the suite. Each college holds its own Room Draw on nights they arrange, but all within a bounded time period each spring.
Every suite is a unique configuration, or at least that has been my experience.
Nothing is perfect. Presumably you believe that its better that at least some kids are doing the right thing compared to no kids doing the right thing. That’s true outside colleges as well. You are better of doing the right thing even if others around you aren’t.
And for those who may not know how to properly minimize risk what better place to be than a place whose primary purpose is education.
Right. 100 percent compliance isn’t possible. That’s why they need to test everyone regularly. Bowdoin and Colby have determined that twice a week is the least that can be done to get a handle on any positive cases and to keep a spike from happening. At bigger schools, there are just going to be outbreaks. Like I said earlier, maybe kids won’t be too sick but will they all quarantine? Those schools are banking on odd campus kids to quarantine on their own and kids in campus housing to report symptoms and get tested. If they are testing kids regularly, there will be asymptotic cases walking around.
I’ll help out. The poster was ChemAM. Incredible!
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22813740/#Comment_22813740
“As for hotel staff, that is their job. They will either have to deal with it or find another job. That’s tough, but it’s the reality we find ourselves in. That’s life.”
what the HBC are doing in Metro Atlanta
Colleges seem like great candidates for pool testing. Increase your testing capacity while still doing sufficient per capital tests. From what I have read, you do not need to test 100% of a population to limit spread/identify outbreaks.
Here’s more color on Wake Forest’s plans, which have been designed in consultation with their medical school and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. I don’t think the plan is to give infected students a key to a hotel room and say “See you in two weeks.” I’m also confident that protection of employees in the hotel will be as important to the school as the safety of students.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides guidelines for isolation of those who are infected and for those who are exposed. Based on this guidance, Wake Forest has made arrangements to set aside distinct spaces that can provide single rooms with private bathrooms and a refrigerator for food supplies. Compliance with isolation and quarantine requirements will be a condition for participation in campus life this fall. Additionally, faculty and staff will have access to new resources through the Employee Health Service. More details for faculty and staff regarding this new service offered in conjunction with the Medical Center will be forthcoming later this summer.
Wake Forest is implementing a robust “screen, test and protect” program based on recommendations for best practices from infectious disease experts, public health officials and guidelines from the American College Health Association (ACHA) COVID-19 Task Force. This multistep process is instrumental in minimizing infections.
Wake Forest is working closely with leading epidemiologists to stay current on the best options for the campus community. Our model will not rely on pre-entry full community testing. Poor reliability of testing resources and capacity, the limited duration of the accuracy — especially when attempted in scale — and significant supply chain uncertainty make this option undesirable to pursue. Currently, neither the CDC nor the ACHA recommend full pretesting of students, faculty and staff as a valuable step toward community health.
The public health community now recommends the use of community screening through symptom monitoring systems and apps before the beginning of school and throughout the semester to indicate who may require testing before joining, or rejoining, the campus. The Wake Forest program in symptom monitoring can be paired with rapid, point-of-service COVID-19 testing to quickly identify and confirm infection, creating better success in containing outbreaks.
Once back on campus, all members of the Wake Forest community who will be working or participating in academic or other activities on campus will be expected to complete a daily survey to screen for symptoms of or exposure to COVID-19. Those who identify as having symptoms of COVID-19 based on the survey will be referred for medical evaluation to determine if testing for COVID-19 is recommended.
Students who are suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19 will be isolated, and employees will be required to remain at home until they are determined to no longer be contagious based on CDC criteria. Rapid identification of individuals who may have experienced an exposure to COVID-19 is an integral part of reducing the transmission and risk of COVID-19 to our community. To achieve this goal, the University is developing our own contact tracing resources to supplement those of our local public health authorities. Individuals who are determined to have experienced a direct exposure to COVID-19 will be notified and expected to quarantine for 14 days after the last date of exposure to the individual with COVID-19.
Compliance with our screen, test, protect program will be an expectation of the entire community and guidelines are in development concerning any exceptions to those requirements.
Wake Forest University will continue to work closely with our local infectious disease experts and public health officials, and will also monitor for any new or updated guidance from national and state public health agencies, such as the CDC and the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS), to update our approach and protocols as necessary.
Student Health Service
Prevention of outbreaks is our top priority and public health strategy. In addition, access to supplies and trained personnel will enable efficient and effective monitoring, remediation and ongoing health maintenance.
Two years ago, Student Health Service space was increased through the comprehensive renovation of Reynolds Gym. Partnerships with Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center were also expanded to facilitate a closer working relationship between these entities. The front line for handling the needs for student testing, tracing, evaluation, diagnosis and treatment will be our on-campus Student Health Service (SHS). We are expanding the capacity of our team and our services to accommodate the forecasted needs of our campus community. Our team will develop and monitor a tracking system and produce a dashboard to inform the campus of our health profile and alert the community to any need for heightened safety protocols. SHS will drive our public education campaign and support our community’s use of symptom monitoring, including distribution of personal thermometers to every student. Mental health services available through the University Counseling Center and psychiatric services in the SHS will remain fully accessible to those in need.
Wake Forest is investing in health management technology and training to prepare for varying circumstances. Our academic medical center will provide invaluable support with testing strategies and protocols, care for the sick and expertise from nationally renowned epidemiologists. Members of our community will have the option to participate in clinical studies that will advance our knowledge about managing this pandemic and increase cutting-edge research to improve the overall health of the community. Existing research studies at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center offer promising options for monitoring samples of the population — including population level surveillance through antibody testing — to identify the prevalence of the virus in the community. Wake Forest will explore possible ways that participation in this study could enhance our ability to monitor the presence of the virus among our campus community."
Testing alone won’t be sufficient. Colleges need to be able to isolate or quarantine infected and potentially infected. If a college has returning students living off campus, the task of isolation and quarantine is infinitely more difficult, if not impossible. These colleges must hope they’ll get lucky and there won’t be an outbreak either on campus or in the nearby communities. It’d be a mess that could end the fall term early if there’s one.
However, you do have to define the pools, and a given student can be in multiple pools (e.g. in a pool defined by living in a specific dorm, also in a pool defined by attending a specific class like introduction to economics).
Don’t think we are talking about the same pools. Pool testing, as I understand it, is taking say 10 test samples (from 10 different people) combining them and running one test on the combined sample. If test comes back negative, everyone of the 10 people are negative. If it comes back positive, you test everyone in that group again to find out which one(s) are positive. Works best the lower your positive rate. From what I have read, pool testing permitted China to test something like 9 million people in one day.
@sylvan8798 I agree with the original poster that if you are a hotel housekeeper, it’s unfortunately your job to make beds and clean up rooms, even in this pandemic. But I think stacking a hotel with people that are isolating because they are sick, results in cleaning up quantities of infectious materials, and that goes beyond a housekeeper’s job. There are specialty companies that deal with this, and they are specialized because they have better PPE for their staff and their staff are trained in how to wear the PPE, are trained in how to deal with infectious stuff (like the bedding), and probably have better ways of disinfecting the air.
My comment was really about how if colleges go back in person, and if they provide housing for sick kids, there are a lot of other responsibilities that come along with it.
How about at home with their family instead of at my place of employment. Teaching children and young adults how not to be a public health nuisance is the job of the parents and their primary care physician.
However, if the pools are defined so that those in the pool are likely to be co-infected, that may make the individual testing more efficient, since the infected people are more likely to be in a smaller number of pools. Whereas, if there is one infected person in each pool, every individual needs to be tested.
@socaldad2002 Yes, I’d definitely add subways and many other places to the list of places to easily spread a virus.
I think many on the thread believe that if you create enough rules and regulations it will be safe for student. I don’t. I think you can mitigate the risk somewhat. But this virus has proved very challenging to pin down. Some nations have done exceedingly well and others have not. Some states have low numbers of cases ( which is changing) and some had huge explosions. A clear cut explanation for how it spreads and how to prevent it isn’t around. Yes, wearing masks is nice and might help a little but it’s clearly not going to stop it cold.
Everyone is going to have to take their chances. When it got really bad in my state, we ordered EVERYTHING online and did not even go out for food. That’s insane. Not sure we’d do it exactly the same the next time around .