I agree. Our son’s college has an official “plan” that says testing will be available when appropriate. Right now I heard from a parent that a football player already there for practice tested positive. His roommate (the parent’s son) had to get tested yet where the university claimed he should go had no tests! And the turn around time is 7 days. The football player who ended up testing positive was waiting for results but allowed to continue practice. Too many colleges are not prepared for this mess.
@Darcy123 oh ok, no wonder I hadn’t heard of it - thanks!
Well, not exactly. I just reread it. They have to petition to get released. Covid is not an excuse but a medical reason is good. Have to go back to your country type of thing but class’s not held on campus is not an excuse to get out of the lease.
Seems like they are formulating rules on house guests and the like. This is like a big dorm but all single rooms. No doubles this year. They have a chef and everything is like buffet style but it will be interesting to see how they do it this year. All breakfast like cereal is included and usually plenty of left overs for lunch. . Then each suite has like 10 people but right now it will be less then half of that. They will have some left over suites incase kids get sick and really have to isolate. Plus others for more places to study . But since they have a chef the food is right there so thats good.
Seems like they can still have their bomb fires, play various games like pool, fuse ball, ping pong etc etc.
This is usually all upperclassmen and engineering with grad students and some researchers so I am hoping they will be more careful then a bunch of freshman might be. They have to wear masks and deep clean on a schedule. There is a lot of space outside and it’s covered by trees and wilderness and very chill.
More information coming.
The Broad Institute which is partnering with many New England colleges is able to turn around tests in 24-48 hrs.
The testing of that football player and his teammates was useless security theater. By the time he got back the result, he had already infected as many people as he was going to infect, and had stopped being infectious. So what was the point?
They’ve processed 8511 tests a day in their biggest day of testing. Will they be able to ramp up to cover many New England colleges? Somehow the shortages that have plagued bigger testing outfits won’t happen to them?
Under the program, participating colleges and universities determine who is eligible to be tested (such as students, faculty, and/or staff, with physician approval) and how often (twice weekly, weekly or once every two weeks).
Broad will assemble and send the test kits, including tubes and swabs, and schools will follow protocols for proper swabbing and test kit handling. Then, Broad will process the tests, returning results within about 24 hours of receipt.
Another sign of how little we still understand of the long term sequalea, particularly, but not only, for the age group most college professors are in, and how unwarranted is the cavalier attitude towards it:
"More than three-quarters of recently recovered COVID-19 patients had heart muscle problems show up during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests, German doctors reported on Monday in JAMA Cardiology. In some patients, the heart may be “in serious trouble as a part of COVID-19 disease,” Dr. Valentina Puntmann of University Hospital Frankfurt told Reuters.
Among 100 patients ages 45 to 53, “a considerable majority” - 78 - had inflammation in the heart muscle and lining. Sixty-seven had recovered at home while 33 had required hospitalization. Half of the former patients were more than two months out since their diagnosis at the time of the MRI.
Thirty-six patients reported ongoing shortness of breath and general exhaustion, and 71 had blood markers of heart muscle damage. Compared with similar people who had not had COVID-19, the recently recovered patients’ hearts pumped more weakly and displayed other risk factors for heart failure.
Puntmann suspects the abnormalities are signs of permanent problems. “While we do not have direct evidence for late consequences yet, such as the development of heart failure … it is quite possible that in a few years, this burden will be enormous based on what we have learned from other viral conditions that similarly affect the heart,” she said."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-science-idUSKCN24S2FC
Hopefully this continues… my D’s New England college is also using them.
Any parents of Notre Dame students here? According to their site, phased return of students starts today. Classes (in person/hybrid) start Aug 10. will they will be our first observation on a large return to campus?
JULY 27
Phase 4
Phased Return of Students to Campus
Students arrive on campus in phases
Many staff and faculty on campus
Continued faculty, staff, and student training on health and safety protocols
Continued restrictions on travel, events and visitors
AUGUST 10 - NOVEMBER 20
Phase 5
Fall Semester in Session
Most undergraduate and graduate students on campus
Most staff and faculty on campus
All campus buildings open and functioning, but in some cases stricter access
Continued restrictions on travel, events, and visitors
i’m rolling the dice too and hoping for the best!
That is what is supposed to happen. Whether or not they are actually able to deliver on what they have been promising remains to be seen.
I don’t know. It seems like this plan was made with Broad pretty early on. Bowdoin released its plan in the first week of July. Broad promised them a certain number of tests per week and how quickly they could get results. I assume that means the Broad Institute had the test kids, tubs, swabs, etc. when they made their deal with Bowdoin and the other schools. These schools planned their fall based on that. Other schools that are saying they don’t have enough testing likely never had enough testing, never said they had a well-thought out plan.
Places like Duke didn’t change their plan because of lack of tests. It seems they just decided to make the change because they decided they needed kids in singles and that was not the original plan.
@hpcsa is an ND parent.
Just to clarify, Duke had always planned on singles with the majority of undergrads on campus but with the unexpected spike that is now going on they wanted to decrease the campus another 30%. In order to do that they are not having juniors and seniors on campus this fall and will allow them first housing priority in the spring, thereby likely displacing freshman and sophomores next semester.
My gut feeling is that they will make almost all undergrad on campus in the fall move out of their dorms the week of thanksgiving giving the college the flexibility of going 100% online in January if things are not better or clears the housing for upperclassman spring semester.
In addition, I’m getting the feeling that with the spike in cases, the faculty are just not going to be comfortable teaching many classes in person this year, similar to what is going on in the middle and secondary schools. I hope I’m wrong.
That’s what they say, but other companies have had trouble getting the reagents they need to complete the tests. Why would we believe Broad would be any different?
@wisteria100 @“Cardinal Fang” I have a daughter who is a rising sophomore at Amherst. Apparently, the Broad Institute is somehow not experiencing the shortages in chemical reagents that the rest of the country is experiencing. My daughter worked with two faculty members remotely over the summer, and they are currently being tested weekly and (according to the professors) still getting mostly 24-hour turn-arounds for results, and the company is still promising mostly 24-hour turn-arounds for results come fall semester. They are already testing several thousands of people each day, and although they are ramping it up in fall, they still have a strict limit of how many they will test per day to ensure quick turnarounds. They must be making their own reagents or something.
Also, Amherst surveyed professors on whether they intended to teach in-person before putting up class offerings and put an “Online Only” label on all classes that will be online either due to size or due to a professor opting to teach online. Only 1/3 of classes will be online, while 2/3 of classes will be HyFlex, meaning in-person for those on-campus with remote students being able to tune in from afar. Assuming the situation doesn’t change, all but one of my daughter’s classes will be in-person.
People in my area have also noted a significant delay in being contacted tracer. So we have a testing shortage, delay in getting results of over one week, and also contact tracing delays. The area school districts seem to be falling in line to be online for at least the first quarter. The metrics for when to do f2f are problematic, but I won’t get into that here (other than to say the issues at the beginning of this paragraph are significant).
And then we have our state universities, some in rural areas of the state. And they think they are going to do all sorts of testing? Those local communities better brace themselves. My state has no plans to have the recommended number of contact tracers and had a very hard time getting tests months ago.
What could possibly go wrong?
As one of their reasons for going 100% remote, Dickinson cited the contact tracing piece. The support for contact tracing previously promised by PA state was now not going to materialize.