With federal health officials sounding the alarm, American colleges are bracing for more-widespread outbreaks of coronavirus within the United States. They are readying communications plans, cautioning students to use preventive health measures, and even preparing for possible college closures.
“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen in this country anymore but a question of when this will happen,” Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Tuesday. “We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad.”
It’s not so much a question of if this will happen in this country anymore but a question of when this will happen.
The contagious respiratory illness, now formally known as Covid-19, broke out in China in late 2019, but it has been spreading around the world, upending the stock market, and raising fears of a global pandemic.
With large numbers of students and faculty members who travel internationally to study, teach, and do research, colleges could be vulnerable to outbreaks, said Sarah Van Orman, chief health officer of University of Southern California Student Health. Another risk factor is colleges’ relative density, with students studying and living in close quarters. “We’re really at the front lines,” said Van Orman, a professor of family medicine.
In colleges’ favor, however, is that younger people so far have contracted Covid-19 at lower rates than others and have recovered better than those who are older and sick.
Because the number of coronavirus cases in the United States remains relatively small — there have been just 59 cases here, according to the CDC — now is the time for American colleges to put plans in place to deal with a possible outbreak, said Jean E. Chin, chair of a special American College Health Association task force on coronavirus. “While there’s still a lull, it’s the perfect time to act,” said Chin, a professor of medicine and a former executive director of the University of Georgia’s health center.
Steps to Take
One of the first actions colleges ought to take is to assemble a campuswide emergency-response committee, Chin and other college-health experts said. Having a crisis-management team organized ensures that college and university administrators speak with one voice, and cuts down on potential rumors or misinformation. Already, some colleges have had to act to tamp down Sinophobia and anti-Asian sentiment that have flared because of coronavirus fears.
Those committees can begin to collectively draft policies if significant numbers of students fall ill. During the H1N1 flu pandemic a decade ago, Chin recalled, some professors at Georgia stuck to strict attendance requirements, marking students off if they missed class or insisting that they get a doctor’s note at the campus health center — where they risked infecting other students. If students had self-quarantined, it would have cut down on infections, Chin said. With triage plans in place, there is now broad agreement across campuses about the steps to take.
New York University announced on Monday it would shut down its Florence campus for at least a month, and other study-abroad programs could follow suit.
Colleges have learned from earlier outbreaks of infectious disease, said Michael Deichen, associate vice president for student health services at the University of Central Florida. He began work in campus health in 2001 and soon was thrown into dealing with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, an illness caused by another form of coronavirus. Since then, he’s dealt with numerous communicable-disease threats, including H1N1, Ebola, and Zika virus. At the beginning, college officials often were slow and reactive, Deichen said. This time, Central Florida set up its campus task force in early January, shortly after the Covid-19 outbreak became public.
With the initial outbreak centered in the Chinese city of Wuhan, colleges at first focused on travelers who had recently been in China, screening and quarantining those who showed coronavirus symptoms. (Beginning in early February, the U.S. government blocked noncitizens who had been in China from entering the country.)
But as the disease spreads globally, it is no longer possible to concentrate only on travelers from China. Two of the most recent hot spots are South Korea, the third-largest source of international students in the United States, and Italy, the second-most-popular destination for Americans studying abroad. New York University announced on Monday it would shut down its Florence campus for at least a month, and other study-abroad programs could follow suit.
Meanwhile, colleges are seeking to minimize students’ risk on campus and to educate them in preventive health measures. Much of colleges’ advice on coronavirus mirrors that for other infectious respiratory illnesses: Wash your hands frequently. Cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough. Try not to rub your eyes or nose. Stay home if you’re sick. Avoid being in close contact with others.
Possible Long-Term Disruptions
Colleges could ultimately take further-reaching actions, depending on the disease’s progression. Because of a lack of transparency in reporting in the early stages of the outbreak, scientists remain unsure of just how fatal the latest coronavirus is. If Covid-19 turns out to be especially infectious, colleges might consider “closing down for a block of time to reduce transmission,” Deichen said.
Campus emergencies are often one-time events, such as a protest march or a snowstorm, in which the impact is felt for a discrete period of time. But a public-health crisis like a coronavirus outbreak could unfold over a much longer span, disrupting activities for weeks or even months and rippling across campuses, Van Orman said. “It can put a real strain on operations.”
College leaders have many variables to consider and choices to make. Van Orman ticked off a few: Should they pre-emptively cancel campus events to cut down on large gatherings where illness can spread? What international-travel policies should be put in place? If there’s a surge in cases, should colleges turn to online or distance education? How can they continue to provide services to ill students without putting staff members at risk? After an outbreak, how do you clean the health center, dormitories, and other campus facilities?
Such decisions may seem overwhelming for small colleges that may not have the same resources as large universities, such as infectious-disease experts or dedicated risk-management staffs. Even bigger institutions can find themselves taxed. Van Orman said Southern California had brought in an outside vendor to help field the 100-some phone calls that come from across the campus every time a coronavirus memo is issued. The extra help frees her and other key administrators to concentrate on more-urgent issues.
There are places small colleges can turn for help, Chin said, including local public-health departments, nearby hospitals, or even other colleges that can share their know-how. And the college-health association’s task force plans to release more in-depth guidance on responding to coronavirus, possibly as soon as later this week.
What’s important, Chin said, is to take the risks of Covid-19 seriously. “I can’t project what’s going to happen,” she said, “but right now, it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop.”