Duke releases week 4 results: 0/289 faculty and staff. 6/6,551 students (of which 4 were off campus symptom/contact traced and 2/6,251 random). And FYI @homerdog they have been having in person classes since Aug 17th - not sure of the overall percentage, but my daughter has 2/5 in person.
@Mwfan1921 not sure why Purdue picked the percentage/week they did but someone reported in our parent page that it’s the number necessary to properly extrapolate the positivity rate to the campus population large. Not sure if that is accurate.
To @usma87’s point, zero hospitalizations at Purdue and only mild symptoms reported, including for staff.
Davidson seems to be doing well after 3+ weeks with students back on campus. Active cases (all asymptomatic) stand at 3 out of 1806 students on their dashboard as of today. They switched to nasal swab PCR tests from the sputum test once kids arrived on campus and have been testing students twice a week over the last couple weeks (though the plan was to test weekly).
Davidson reopened Lake Campus to students on Friday in a sign things are going better after an initial spike to 13 cases. Students still are not permitted any visitors in dorm rooms even hall mates. My freshman is doing most socializing outdoors in small groups w/masking and social distancing though at times students end up closer than 6 ft apart outside. He says it is so difficult to always be aware of your surroundings and keeping your distance especially outdoors. The dining hall is open with limited seating indoors but most of the kids are choosing to eat outside. All in all, he’s thrilled to be at Davidson. The student community is already pretty tight knit and the kids seem to be looking after each other. There have been no parties that he’s aware of and students are taking the Honor Code seriously.
Are any classes in person?
@homerdog – Davidson profs were allowed to choose their teaching modality. When I looked at the schedule for the Fall it seemed like 60 to 70% are online, most the rest are hybrid and then a sprinkling are full face-to-face. My D has 3 online and 1 hybrid this Fall. The in-person part of a class is being held in a spacious on campus art gallery – beautiful! Most of her friends are similar or 2+2.
Fyi, the college has 1500 students on campus, 300 off campus (mostly Juniors who were supposed to be abroad, my D included!). There are about 200 students studying entirely remotely and didn’t return to Davidson.
@KnightsRidge – so glad your son has been meeting folks and is doing well! My upperclassman D and her friends have been so concerned about the first-years making connections. The good news at Davidson is that students can pretty easily do outdoor socializing until the semester ends b4 Thanksgiving. Except for rainy days, of course.
Agreed; however, there should be some reasonable standard of care. You would think the schools would look to their peers and try to meet that standard of care. The schools that are using Broad Institute like Tufts, Williams, Wesleyan, BC and others test all students twice a week. That seems to set a reasonable standard of care. It seems schools that are not conducting testing for all students are not taking reasonable steps to prevent the spread of the virus to their students.
Both my kids’ schools had classes today.
Oh, I agree. What I meant by “soup” was the general ecosystem a lot of these universities - mainly, state universities -operate in. IMO, their administrators are no better than politicians.
Both of my kids colleges had classes today Labor Day. It was first day of classes for the older one. But they were thanking essential workers for working on their campuses today, handing out free coffee vouchers to campus safety and dining workers, in a masked and socially distant way. It is not a party day by any stretch.
And btw Broad Institute has been testing in nursing homes and municipalities and homeless shelters too since April.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: For the umpteenth time, please stick to specific school issues. I’m going to delete a bunch of posts right now.
Tagging on to @waverlywizzard’s post…Here is an article that discusses the Broad Institute’s testing and includes a list of the colleges using Broad. I don’t believe that every school using Broad is testing students twice/week, but many are.
Can someone who has a stronger stats background than me explain why schools like Purdue should or should not be testing higher volumes than they are in light of their current positivity rates ? Whatever happened to drawIng conclusions for a population (in this case the prevalence of asymptomatic covid) based on statistical sampling. If my calculation is right it would mean about 1700 tests would be done a week for a student population of 40K to have a 99% confidence with a Margin of error +/- 3. Looks like Purdue’s plan is far more than that plus risk based to test cover certain categories of employees weekly. Its testing plan seems pretty well thought out and for these schools that are running surveillance testing every day, they can identify a change in trends pretty quickly and make adjustments to testing as needed. Compare this to schools like SMU or the large public TX universities that didn’t require students to be tested at the start or the semester, and whose ‘mandatory surveillance’ testing seems nonexistent -from what I have found reading online, these schools test symptomatic and contact traced students, and besides that, It seems voluntary.
Universities seem to be the only entities with the ability to use statistically valid methods to test their asymptomatic populations so I assume many of them that are doing surveillance testing use such methods to choosing their weekly samples. Yet many on this board seem To think that unless schools are testing everyone on campus once or twice a week, that it not enough…and I am not sure why the sampling method seems to have no bearing.
Are there any cities, corporations, hospitals, etc in this country with even much smaller populations than these large universities surveillance testing of random populations in a statistically valid way to monitor the spread of covid?i am not aware of any. And if you think think the % positive on some college campuses is higher than ‘acceptable’, what is that is compared to…the positive rate in your town ? State? Or that you believe the only acceptable rate is zero? Not asking to be snarky, would really like to know. Because most testing In this country is biased toward symptomatic or contact traced individuals (aside from college campuses and medical workers), we really have no idea what % of the population Is infected at any given time. I think the closest example of a general population for which infection rate is known without sampling bias is the air craft carrier Roosevelt for which masks and distance were found to make a big difference in becoming infected…
And before you say ‘those college kids don’t follow the rules so we have to test them all twice a week’…Many here have commented that their kids are better off living at home because it’s less restrictive than campus. Are the general positivity rates are zero in your community? Are you and your family, and all of your kids’ friends who they see getting tested weekly? I am not. I have been tested twice for antibodies but that’s it. I mask, socially distance, keep a small bubble of in person contacts, but I do the normal grocery shopping, errands, etc.as I assume most of us do with a normal protocol of masks, distance,hand washing, etc. Meanwhile there are 50,000 + visitors coming through my tiny town daily and I am highly confident that If we had covid testing in my town on any given Saturday of a random statistical sample, the covid positive rate would be much higher than any school like Purdue… and with higher potential of close contact amongst such people. I see it, every single day. In a perfect world, we would all be able to test ourselves for covid using a daily saliva test…millions test their blood sugar with a finger prick multiple times a day, so too could we do a daily Covid saliva test. But we don’t have that. So I will continue to be encouraged by schools that are implementing their surveillance plans and look forward to seeing what adjustments they make as the semester goes on, hoping that other schools can learn and a set of best practices starts to emerge…
It’s hard for me to keep all of these plans straight in my head, but I think UIUC and IU are relying heavily on the saliva test and Purdue (and a lot of NE schools using Broad) is relying on the nasal swab.
ETA: it looks like Purdue is using the saliva test too, so probably not the difference. There are differences in the methods with a saliva test. The reason I’m looking at saliva tests is the lack of a set defined scientific process like we see for the nasal swab. Each school is doing it their own way.
@homerdog So far, only 1 of his 3 classes meets in person (once a week). As I understand it, his double credit Humanities class is rotating different sections through an in person module but his section currently is meeting remotely. He says he doesn’t mind the remote classes at this point because the professors are so much better than what he experienced in high school and is just happy to be on campus. His Hum profs are supposedly planning small in person outdoor social gatherings.
Thanks @AlmostThere2018. My son says some freshmen are struggling to make connections especially those w/o roommates. He’s heard that a handful returned home within the first 2 weeks of classes during the grace period that Davidson grants leave of absences and/or refunds room and board. Some of those will gap and return next fall. He’s making friends though the restrictions certainly make it more difficult to meet kids outside of his residence hall. Fortunately, his coed floor has bonded very quickly. For non-athletes, so far there just haven’t been many opportunities to mix with kids outside their floor (other than his small orientation group) or meet upperclassmen. Many of the first year bonding traditions are understandably not taking place this year (Cake Race, Flickerball, etc.). I haven’t said anything to him about what he is missing out on since he doesn’t know any different. He’s always been a “cup is half full” kind of kid and seems to be making the best of it. He adores Davidson in spite of everything, and says if the Davidson experience is this good now, imagine how great it will be when things return to normal. Music to any parent’s ears…
Purdue is doing a combination of saliva and nasal swabs. They are not using Broad.
They used Vault for pre-arrival saliva testing but have switched to utilizing on campus labs now.
My understanding is they can process up to 1000 tests/day on campus if need be.
Big news of the day from my D is that a hornet got into her dorm room. She has no idea how as her window wasn’t open and she’s on the top floor of her building. Now she can’t find it.
As an aside, her labs start this week and she can’t wait. I’m waiting for a selfie because she said she needs to wear her mask, glasses, goggles, and a face shield because she’ll be closer than 6 feet from her lab partner.
Amherst is using Broad and is testing students 3x per week and faculty/staff once per week.
Can anyone recommend any other NC, SC or FL colleges with solid Covid-19 protocols? My junior is interested in touring schools if possible. I’ m not sure she has the academic chops for Duke or Davidson but Elon might be a good fit. She has a 4.3 GPA but no standardized test scores yet.
Wisconsin Madison is struggling. As for today they are asking kids to limit movement outside of residences to classes, testing, jobs, etc. But based on reports of parties and such up to this point I suspect asking politely is not going to work. The county has quarantined a bunch of greek houses. Kids can’t leave the houses until no positive tests for either 10 or 14 days. If someone tests positive the clock resets. It sounds very chaotic there. A friend told me that they were told on their zoom call today administration did not expect things to get this bad this quickly.
Glad to hear students at Andrews are complying. There are a few students in the Ciccone Commons who are frequently seen violating the mask policy when needed, not social distancing, students congregating in areas where they are not suppose to be, and other more serious violations. I heard more students are being sent home. Today I noticed on the school’s dashboard, the student population is 2,683 with 14 active cases. That population was 2,700+ (2799?) last week if I’m not mistaken.
It’s not a matter of statistics and it’s not a matter of sampling. Seemingly to keep cases down, you have to find all of them.