Classes will resume in the fall, but college administrators are grappling with how to teach students without fueling coronavirus outbreaks.
Syracuse University, New York University, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Notre Dame announced this week that students will be welcome on campus in August, where the schools will hold classes on an accelerated schedule.
Students will begin classes earlier in the academic year so that schools can suspend all in-person classes by Thanksgiving. The hope is that the risk of transmission will be lower if students do not travel to and from campus.
There are no specific guidelines for schools to follow prior to reopening, but most schools have announced that they will make coronavirus testing accessible, institute social distancing guidelines in classrooms, and clean campuses regularly.
NYU will provide masks to all students and faculty members and allow for more flexibility for students to take classes over two or three semesters and expand summer course offerings.
Syracuse University Chancellor Kent Syverud said that large lectures could be attended virtually, and students will be able to participate in small group discussions. Figuring out how dormitories can operate safely, Syverud said, is the biggest challenge for the university.
“We have a lot of people working 24/7, and it is going to involve change. Part of college is interacting with all kinds of people. The key thing is testing. The key thing is being ready with better testing quicker and better treatment and better ability to separate and contact monitor,” Syverud said.
Meanwhile, California’s state university system will only offer remote classes at least through the fall semester, with the exception of some in-person, lab-based classes. The university system includes 23 campuses and teaches roughly 500,000 people. Some CSU campuses pushed enrollment deadlines back to June, so it remains to be seen how many students will attend classes in the fall.
The American College Health Association, an organization made up of healthcare providers on college campuses, issued 20 pages of guidance for universities to consider before reopening, such as how schools can monitor new coronavirus cases and boost testing capacity on campuses. Safeguarding a campus from an epidemic is costly, however, and schools have already lost critical income after shutting down campuses earlier this year when the coronavirus pandemic began.
Despite some signs of promise from some pharmaceutical companies about vaccines in development, students probably won’t have access to one before classes start in August. While President Trump has said more than once that a vaccine is not far off, top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has cautioned that vaccine development will take at least 12 months. He said in a Senate health committee hearing last week that to tell parents, students, and administrators otherwise “would be a bridge too far.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated guidance Wednesday about how the coronavirus is transmitted, stressing that the virus “does not spread easily” on contaminated surfaces.
“This is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads, but we are still learning more about this virus,” the CDC said.
Health experts had warned early on that the virus can remain on plastic or steel surfaces for days. A March New England Journal of Medicine report concluded that both infected air and surfaces “may directly affect virus transmission,” although there has not been direct evidence that anyone has been infected after touching contaminated surfaces.
Dr. Hendrik Streeck, a virologist in Germany who is leading the response in his country’s worst-hit areas, said in April that he hadn’t found evidence showing that the virus can live on surfaces.
“The virus spreads in other places: the party in Ischgl, the club in Berlin, the football game in Bergamo,” he said on German TV. “We know it’s not a smear infection that is transmitted by touching objects, but that close dancing and exuberant celebrations have led to infections.”
Still, the World Health Organization maintains on its website that the virus can spread “if you touch contaminated objects and surfaces.”
Over 100,000 new coronavirus cases have been reported to the WHO in the last 24 hours, “The most in a single day since the outbreak began,” said Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Nearly two-thirds of the new cases were reported in just four countries, but Ghebreysus did not specify which four countries had recorded the most cases in the past 24 hours. He added, “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” according to CNBC.
The United States leads the world in the number of cases, with over 1.5 million and roughly 93,000 deaths.
Vaccine researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston reported in two new studies Wednesday that the presence of coronavirus antibodies provides protection from future infections. The reports, published in the journal Science, are among the first peer-reviewed papers studying immunity to COVID-19 in primates, according to the Boston Globe.
The team conducted research with laboratory monkeys. Dr. Dan Barouch, lead author and head of Beth Israel’s Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, said more research must be done to determine whether the findings apply to humans but that he was hopeful given similarities in the genetic make-up of humans and rhesus macaque monkeys.
His lab is working to create a coronavirus vaccine with pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, who received $1 billion from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
Most people in the U.S. believe wearing a mask around other people is a sign of respect and that Trump should wear one too. New HuffPost/YouGov polling shows that about 69% of people consider wearing a mask around others a sign of respectfulness, with 83% of people rejecting the interpretation that wearing a mask conveys “weakness.” Polling results show that Democrats and Republicans both consider wearing masks to be beneficial for themselves and others. A majority of people, 63%, believe that Trump and other senior administration officials should wear masks too. Trump has mostly resisted pressure from reporters to wear a mask while giving briefings or when he travels. Last week, while visiting a medical supply distribution company in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Trump did not wear a face mask when speaking with employees. Vice President Mike Pence similarly did not wear a mask when he went to speak with healthcare workers at the Mayo Clinic in Ohio last month.
