From California Today of the NY Times: Until Thanksgiving, when most students went home to complete fall classes remotely, the University of California, San Diego, had some 10,000 students in campus housing and about 25,000 students, researchers and staff members on campus in person — more people in one place daily than any other California university. Infection rates at the school have been low, however. Less than one half of one percent of students on and around campus have tested positive for the virus since late September when fall classes started. In surrounding areas of San Diego County, by contrast, the test positivity rate has averaged around 6 percent, a campus spokeswoman said.
University officials credit aggressive testing, an app that expedites conventional contact tracing, outdoor classrooms and assiduous rules for masking and distancing on campus. But San Diego isn’t the U.C.’s only success story. As the system’s 10 campuses prepared last week to break for the holiday and pivot to fully remote instruction, infection rates were lower than in their surrounding areas across the board, according to campus and community dashboards. Nine campuses had test positivity rates of less than half of a percent for the week of Nov. 16-23, and U.C. Merced, which had no weekly breakdown, showed an overall test positivity rate since July of less than 2 percent, compared with more than 7 percent in the surrounding county.
We asked Dr. Michael Drake, the new U.C. president, last week about the trend. “What we’ve done, that seems to be working, is we’ve based our decisions on science,” said Dr. Drake, who is also a physician. Here’s an excerpt from our conversation, lightly edited and condensed:
The University of California campuses have dealt in a variety of ways with the virus.
We meet every week and review what each of the campuses is doing. It’s a conversation that began before I was here. The campuses ranged in the number of students they’ve brought back, from a low of about 10 percent to a high of about 60 percent of the normal on-campus student population. That’s been determined by the circumstances in the county and then the type of rooms that are available.
What best practices are emerging?
We don’t have students in doubles, with some rare exceptions. Places with more dorms of the old type — with a long hallway and shared bathrooms — have fewer students than in newer construction with single rooms with bathrooms attached. We did intake screenings — they had to test, then sequester and then retest when they first came to campus. And there’s regular surveillance testing of asymptomatic people, with isolation, contact tracing and quarantine.
Any innovative approaches?
U.C. San Diego has a newer type of housing that allows them to have more students living on campus. They’re testing wastewater to look for evidence of virus, and then when they find it, they go back in and test everyone in the building. In a couple of cases, they’ve found virus in the water, tested everyone and then found asymptomatic cases. It works.
How are you handling parties, which have been a big source of outbreaks?
Most of our campuses start later. By the time September rolled around we saw what happened with campuses that started early. And we learned from that. Our students are thoughtful, intelligent adults interested in furthering their educations, and they want to do what it takes to be safe.
Yes, but what about off-campus fraternity and sorority houses?
We’ve messaged actively with those students and offer them testing on a frequent basis. And yes, students living on campus do have a lower test positivity rate.
Sports have caused outbreaks, too.
Yeah, I’m concerned about sports. I’m concerned about fans at sporting events. But we’ve also seen teams who’ve been able to play safely. I think basketball is going to be a challenge.
What will the spring semester look like?
It remains to be seen how the vaccines will be deployed, but our first mantra is safety. When students come back to campus, they’ll have the same test-sequester-retest screening. And we’re assessing the appropriate number of students to have on campus now.
Do you see any changes that will continue beyond this crisis?
The chancellors and I get together once a week virtually. It used to be once a month when everybody had to fly to the meeting. Now we meet on a Zoom call and I think we connect better that way. Also, in our health system, telemedicine visits are much, much higher than before the pandemic. I think that will continue to improve.
How much has the pandemic cost the University of California so far?
We and others across the country have had massive costs, both in what we’re doing to keep students safe and in shifting to remote learning. Including the health system, those costs for us are north of $2.7 billion so far. We received some assistance from the CARES Act and that made a real difference. But it has been extraordinarily challenging. We hope that future relief is at hand.
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/us/uc-covid-plan.html
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