SuzyQ also baffled by BC’s low testing in addition to Notre Dame’s. Although their positive rate is considerably higher. Like your school, both of my kids have signed on to robust testing with Broad participating colleges. Maybe Broad has different protocols they can offer? And different price points for the colleges to choose? I know my kids colleges outlayed considerable resources for the most robust testing. Meaning twice weekly for 1,700 kids and 2,300 kids respectively. They are approaching 8k cumulative tests this week. And extremely low positive rate. And like the Hamilton parents posting, both of my kids do not report subpar experiences thusfar being on campus. They much prefer to be with their peers and navigate their experiences.
I too am shocked by BC - especially with their neighborhood competitors (Northeastern, BU, etc… ) killing it on testing (via their own in house testing). Does BC also use Broad?
I’m wondering if any colleges are adding testing via the $5 tests that were recently approved. You’d think they would.
^^And how are those tests administered? Who participates and how often? For example a friend’s son at BC has been tested at least 6 or 7 times: upon arrival, 4 days later and then as each person in his 8 person suite tested positive for the virus (the first group had 3 positives at once). He has tested negative each time and to date hasn’t caught the virus. But that’s 6+ tests on one student. That isn’t reflected on a dashboard.
I also think the adage that the more you test the more cases you have is applicable at some level. Depending on how and who schools are testing the’ll be able to control their positivity rate and number of active cases to a degree.
I believe I read that Broad is charging $25/test to participating colleges.
If you are talking about the $5 saliva test developed by Yale while working with the NBA, the college still needs an in-house lab to run the results, as UIUC has been doing. AFAIK, this is not a mail away saliva test like Purdue purchased from Rutgers.
I do not know what testing NEU & BU are conducting, but also thought they were running in-house testing. I may be completely wrong about that.
VPA according to their dashboards, NEU conducts 5,000 tests daily on average. BU about 3,000 - 5,000 daily.
BC tested 1228 last week according to their dashboard.
NEU and BU do their own testing. BC participates with Broad.
At my daughter’s college every single student that comes to campus and faculty and staff are tested once a week. Clearly they are not doing that at BC because they have 9,500 students. Giving them the benefit of the doubt perhaps they are doing sewage testing or some other surveillance testing that I don’t know about?
The $5 test I’m talking about is the card test… I don’t remember the company. It does not need to be processed in a lab, it gives instant results in 15 minutes but does need to be administered by a healthcare professional
Edit to add the link here I just found it …t’s from Abbott
@waverlywizzard
BC is testing 1228 out of 10,000 …seems very low compared to BU and NEU. Doesn’t appear that BC has mandatory testing.
1228 is incorrect. I think that was earlier in the current week, after a few days of testing. The undergrad numbers are posted cumulatively by week:
8/16 to 8/23: 1,398 (move-in was spread across 8/20 to 8/29)
8/24 to 8/30: 6,973
8/31 to 9/6: 3,837
9/7 to 9/13: 2,647 (so far, as of yesterday morning, for this week not yet complete)
They have mandatory testing. It’s just not clear what their protocol is.
There is an ambiguity in the dashboard with regard to “undergrads” tested. I also don’t think the full 9500 are on campus - it may be more like 7500.
Amherst’s fall semester has gone extremely well so far. All students are being tested three times a week, all faculty/staff are being tested once a week, and there hasn’t been a single positive in over two weeks.
On-campus Amherst students are very excited because starting today, they are piloting a contactless delivery program where students can order deliveries from roughly 30 local restaurants to a centralized location on-campus, using a delivery company exclusive to western Massachusetts.
They said back when they announced their fall plans that, while juniors and seniors would have first priority for spring, they hoped to bring everyone back in spring and it would largely depend on how things went this fall. D gets to stay either way because she is an RA, but she is hopeful they will invite everyone back for spring considering both how well it has gone so far and how well it has gone for other NESCACs who have invited all students back and are having students in doubles.
What I hear you saying, is SUNY was not in the running.
From home or off-campus. I predict that most schools that welcomed students back on campus are going to be shutting down their campuses by the end of October (and that goes for Canadian schools as well). I’m just hoping that DS21 can make it through his first quadmester of high school before everything pivots back to online only. DS19 is already studying online from home.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t be so thrilled about the 30 local restaurants delivering. Board plans are expensive and I wouldn’t want to pay for board and then have S19 also eating out. Last year, he ate dinner or lunch off campus maybe five times total and two of those times were when he had friends from high school visiting. Eating out means paying double for food.
why do you say that? Many smaller schools are doing just fine with their numbers right now and not really changing much about how they run the campus for the rest of the semester. Many of the NESCACs have zero cases and are testing two - three times per week. I don’t see those schools sending kids home. Some mid-sized privates seem to be doing pretty well too - Duke, Vandy.
The K-12 schools here have a variety of operating programs. Denver Public schools is entirely remote and that was supposed to last until mid-Oct, but plans now are to start bring kids (k-1) back in the last week of Sept and then continue to add grades as they can.
They’ve figure out little kids aren’t doing well at home.
I do not think those tests are widely available yet. Wasn’t there something about the Fed Gov’t purchasing a large % of the early availability? I may be confused as there are so many tests.
“Company will ship tens of millions of tests in September, ramping to 50 million tests a month at the beginning of October.”
I do not know Abbott’s plans for distribution of the 50 million tests but having that many more tests available will be an advantage wherever they are deployed.
I think some schools are adjusting their risk tolerance. If kids get sick but no one ends up in the hospital they feel more confident about staying open. Many of the larger schools, most of which aren’t discussed on this website, have large numbers of cases, haven’t shut down and don’t seem to be considering it.
On a positive note, significant numbers of schools appear to be doing very well keeping their cases numbers low. But testing protocols and student compliance may factor into those stats as well.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-college-cases-tracker.html
I did say “most” not “all” and I said by the end of October. Just because some schools are managing at the moment there is no guarantee that as community spread inevitably increases with the fall, those schools that are not self-contained bubbles aren’t also going to be seeing corresponding increases in cases. There’s going to be a tipping point where they are not going to be able to contain the spread and will have no choice but to shut down their campuses and send everyone back home. Time will tell. While “some” smaller/mid-sized schools might pull it off, I see no hope for the bigger schools.
@homerdog not every student has a full meal plan. My son has a kitchen in his on campus townhome but was required to have at least the minimal meal plan. We could choose from several if we wanted more dining hall/meal swipes. However, knowing the dining hall was going to be mostly carryout and probably a pain to deal with, as well as not knowing if campus would have to shut down early, it didn’t make sense for us to choose anything larger. So we chose the smallest meal swipe plan, that also has meal money that can be used at any eatery on campus, as well as meal trucks that visit campus (using meal money means meals are tax free; if you pay cash, tax is added to food purchased at the eateries). We can add meal money at any time if he runs out.
So far it is working out well. He eats a mix of campus eatery food, buys groceries with his roommates for meals at home, and also eats occasional delivery/carry out food. Just because a campus arranges to have local restaurants deliver on campus does not mean people are “paying twice” for meals. I think it’s a great way to give local restaurants business now when they really need it. At the same time, it offers a safe option for kids who want something occasionally that they can’t get on campus, while lessening a chance at exposure by not having them frequently eating off campus.
The Abbott test is supposed to cost $5, but that’s not counting the cost of the machine. Another problem for colleges wanting to use it is the federal government is buying 150 million Abbott tests, which as far as I can see is all of them through the end of 2020.
Why the doom and gloom on this thread? Fauci just said that vaccines (plural) will be available by fall 2021. Said “by the end of 2021, we should be back to what we all consider normal life.”
Do you know something that Fauci does not know? He’s not publicly voicing any concern about how many people will take if, if it will be safe, etc. I’m tired of misinformation and “opinions” on this. The companies making the vaccines just signed a pact (Fauci urged them apparently) to say they won’t release vaccines until they are safe and effective.
And, in fact, teachers are high on the list to get them so I bet schools will also be back in swing by fall. He doesn’t mention anything about long term mask use either. He uses the term “normal life”.