Many universities see Covid-19 testing as the only way to safely bring students back to campuses this fall, but their approaches vary as widely as their mascots.
Some are requiring test results before a student gets to school, others are offering screenings upon arrival. Still others are relying on symptom screening and random surveillance testing. And the lucky ones with their own labs are putting them to work, regularly testing swabs or saliva from those on campus for the novel coronavirus.
The costs of not testing were starkly illustrated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill this week. The school didn’t require a test before returning and the rate at which results for on-campus tests were coming back positive shot to 13.6% from 2.8% just a week after classes began, bringing the total infected to 135 Tuesday. It canceled in-person classes Monday and is moving most students off campus.
The University of Notre Dame, like UNC, invited students back early in August but required them to be tested before arrival. Still, it saw results surge, hitting 147 on Tuesday, less than two weeks after the first case was diagnosed. Contact tracing efforts found that most cases traced to seniors living off-campus.
That prompted President John Jenkins to move all undergraduate classes online for at least two weeks and clamp down on activity, restricting students in off-campus housing from coming to campus. Public spaces on campus were closed and residence halls were restricted to those who live there, and gathering limits were cut in half to 10 people.
The school had partnered with Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings and administers tests at its football stadium where those with symptoms can be tested. Jenkins said in an on-line address on Tuesday evening that “we will in coming weeks both enhance our testing of those experiencing symptoms and our surveillance testing of those without symptoms.”
If those measures contain the spread, in-person learning could resume, Jenkins said. If not, students would be sent home as they were in the spring semester.
Schools across the U.S. are finding no easy answers for how to institute and police the new regimen of masks, distancing and screening for students who yearn to resume not only their educations but also their social lives, with parties and gatherings with friends.
“Many schools are handing out a mask and a bottle of hand sanitizer and saying, ‘OK, go behave yourselves,’” said A. David Paltiel, a Yale University professor of public health who co-authored a study that concluded schools should test every few days with rapid, inexpensive tests. “And I think that’s just setting students up to fail. And not only that, but be blamed for the failure.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t recommend testing all returning students, faculty and staff upon their return to campus. It does, however, recommend broad screenings of individuals who don’t have symptoms in some settings, like residence halls, lab facilities and lecture rooms where the novel coronavirus could spread rapidly.
Many students who return to campuses will experience some form of testing, but the frequency of the tests has become a major differentiator between colleges.
Ruby Davis, an incoming freshman at Binghamton University in New York, will take a nasal swab test when she arrives on campus on Aug. 21 for her 11 a.m. appointment. She should get her results within 30 minutes. With a negative test, she said, she’ll be allowed to join freshman orientation.