Stanford won’t be the only school making a last-minute change, unfortunately. The more communicable variants are going to take over soon as predominant strains, on top of an existing peak. Especially for schools on quarter system, it makes more sense to delay campus openning until after the spring break.
We have been monitoring COVID in California and specifically Santa Clara county for a while now so Stanford’s decision is not a surprise. They did have a good testing and quarantine plan in place but the positivity and and hospitalization rates are crazy high. Hope things are better for spring quarter.
Stanford made the right call, but it sucks for the students.
While I agree they made the right call the rate of cases in Santa Clara has been rising rapidly since mid November. With the likelihood of student picking up the disease during the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years holidays this was foreseeable. The plug should have been pulled earlier or at least students warned this a significant possibility. Instead contrary signals were sent out.
It’s interesting to note Stanford’s decision contrasts with those of Northwestern and UChicago, both similarly on quarter systerm. Northwestern has already started it winter quarter and UChicago starts today.
Yep, Northwestern students started returning a week ago. That said, the Evanston Covid positivity rate is 3%. Hopefully returning students don’t cause a spike in cases.
Hopefully they don’t. COVID cases seem to have at least plateaued in the Midwest while they’re still peaking in CA.