It’s a spring of hope — and danger.
After a long and challenging fall, colleges learned a few important lessons about how Covid-19 spreads on their campuses, and what might work to reduce student cases. Widespread vaccination is on the horizon, as the gradual rollout of two vaccines in the U.S. may herald a return to some sense of normalcy by late 2021.
At the same time, infection rates are spiking across the country, which is still waiting to realize the full toll of possible case surges from winter holiday gatherings. In addition, a new variant of the coronavirus that appears to be more contagious has emerged, and is expected to spread quickly across the United States.
Even as much has changed since the fall, higher education’s approach to the spring looks remarkably familiar. Many campuses that operated mostly online in August have opted to do so again. And many colleges that held in-person classes and housed students are planning to remain in person — knowing, however, that their carefully laid plans may end up going out the window.
Even with the spring semester just weeks away for some, what it will look like remains up in the air.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found itself at the center of a cautionary tale this past fall, when rising infection rates forced it to send many students home just one week after the start of classes. Five months later, UNC is poised to give in-person operation another try. Administrators say a final decision about whether to offer face-to-face classes will be announced by Saturday.
Leaders are discussing whether the current state of the pandemic might merit another remote term, said Audrey Pettifor, a professor of epidemiology who advises the administration on its coronavirus planning.
One option on the table is pushing back the start of in-person classes to sometime after January 19, the first day of spring semester, to give holiday-related case numbers time to improve. “I’m torn on this,” Pettifor said. At UNC and many other campuses, documented cases of people catching the coronavirus in class have been rare to nonexistent. It appears that colleges’ masking and distancing protocols in classrooms work well. “At the same time, as a faculty member, I don’t think I would want to be in a classroom with 50 kids right now, even knowing the data,” Pettifor said. A delayed start “gives people peace of mind,” she said. “Given that the hospitals are full everywhere and the cases are surging, I think it’s probably the right thing to do.”
Other campuses have already made the call to delay the start of their semesters. The Wall Street Journal tallied more than a dozen colleges that have delayed their in-person start dates. On Tuesday, Indiana University of Pennsylvania pushed back the start of its semester by three weeks, citing a surge in cases locally.
Centre College, in Kentucky, and Quincy University, in Illinois, are both leaning on their January terms, to be held mostly or entirely online, to give them time to plan and see the state of the pandemic at the end of the month.
Meanwhile, the science of coronavirus transmission is now much clearer than it was at the start of the fall term. Even the new virus variant, while is believed to be more contagious, doesn’t change health experts’ basic recommendations for preventing spread. Yet not all colleges are bowing to the solidifying consensus among epidemiologists that frequent testing of even asymptomatic students is a critical component for any in-person, residential college experience.
UNC began the fall semester by testing only students who showed symptoms of Covid-19. Cases among students immediately spiked, forcing the university to flip to online classes. The university’s spring testing plans could not be more different. All undergraduates living or taking classes on campus would have to undergo testing twice a week, no matter their health.
That plan aligns closely with the “ideal” recommendations from the American College Health Association, released late last month, which call for twice-weekly testing with a turnaround time of 48 hours or less for the results. “It’s very rigorous,” Pettifor said. But it hasn’t eased all faculty members’ fears: As of Tuesday evening, 163 of them have signed a petition urging the university to go completely online in the spring, citing worsening local virus numbers.
In contrast, the University of Missouri at Columbia plans to test only students who have symptoms, and the close contacts of students who test positive. Missouri health experts advised against the surveillance testing of students who don’t have symptoms, said Christian Basi, a spokesman. He pointed The Chronicle to a video in which one such expert, John Middleton, a professor in the veterinary school, explains that surveillance testing uses up a lot of resources, only to catch people who are less likely to spread the virus because they don’t have symptoms. “With the supply chain the way it is, with logistics the way they are, we’re better to focus on those people that really need a test because it’s medically indicated,” he says in the video.
With logistics the way they are, we’re better to focus on those people that really need a test because it’s medically indicated.
Those who support widespread testing contend it helps control the spread of the virus in a population — young adults — that’s less likely to have symptoms. Letting the virus spread asymptomatically among college students could expose them to long-term health consequences yet unknown, as Corey Kalbaugh, an epidemiologist who leads Clemson University’s testing strategy, previously told The Chronicle. It also increases the community’s coronavirus rate, upping the likelihood that more vulnerable community members will contract the disease, so long as they remain unvaccinated.
Quincy University tested 25 percent of its athletes weekly in the fall, but didn’t surveillance-test nonathletes, who make up less than half the student body. Leaders haven’t finalized a spring testing plan yet, although it will include at least some additional testing, said Brian McGee, the president.
They’ve seen the value in testing asymptomatic students. When they tested all students upon arrival in the fall, out of a student body of about 1,100, almost 50 turned up positive, although they were asymptomatic. “All 50 of those kids were, like, shocked,” McGee said. “That was eye-opening for us.” But he’s uncertain whether tests will be available in the relatively rural Quincy, Ill., to do the American College Health Association’s recommended twice-weekly screening. Widespread vaccination would reduce the need for surveillance testing, but it’s unclear when young, healthy adults who aren’t front-line workers will be able to get shots.
More than one in five Quincy students eventually contracted the coronavirus over the fall semester. “A single student testing positive is one student too many,” McGee said. On the other hand, he thinks they’ve done well, considering their circumstances. Institutions like Duke or Cornell Universities, which had much lower overall case rates, are wealthier and located in communities where people may be better about mask-wearing and social-distancing. “There is a rich-poor gap here, and there are important geographic differences that we need to be respectful of,” he said.
Centre College is another small, liberal-arts college that’s done some surveillance testing, though not as much as the ACHA recommends. In the fall, it tested anywhere from 25 percent to all of its students once a week, depending on the circumstances. About 4 percent of its students got the coronavirus that term. A parent donation of 10,000 rapid antigen tests will make it possible for the college to do a similar level of testing in the spring.
Boyle County, in which Centre College is located, had low coronavirus rates until Thanksgiving, when the institution sent its students home, said Michael Strysick, a spokesman. Then cases there exploded, putting Boyle among the top in the country for cases per resident.
Centre’s spring semester begins on February 8, and leaders are hoping the numbers will improve by then, so they can go through with their plans for an in-person spring similar to their fall. If they do, it will be a true test of the college’s coronavirus-combatting protocol — whether it can withstand a much higher community rate.
