If you had an idea that Omicron was something mainly on the east coast, think again - or just read below. If it's in San Diego County, you can be sure it's in LA County. So that raises the question - really reinforces the question - we raised yesterday for UCLA. What will be the policy when UC opens - with classes!! - on January 3? Scroll to the second item in this posting: USC has alerted its students it is considering going online and will decide by the end of this week. Stanford has told its students it will start online.
Reminder: The last time UCLA shut down and went online was in March 2020. Faculty and students were give 24 hours notice at a point on the calendar when the winter quarter was still underway and exams would start the following week. One could argue then that because the situation was moving fast, there was no choice. But now we are in a hiatus between quarters and a couple of weeks before winter quarter begins. Someone needs to make a decision very soon. If USC can make a decision by the end of this week, and if Stanford has already made its decision, UCLA should not stall and then repeat what happened in March 2020.
UCSD reports ‘unprecedented’ spike in wastewater COVID viral load
December 18, 2021, KUSI Newsroom
SAN DIEGO (KUSI) – An “unprecedented” spike in COVID-19 viral load in wastewater collected from San Diego County’s primary wastewater treatment facility was reported Saturday by UC San Diego School of Medicine researchers.
The amount of COVID-19 virus detected in wastewater has predicted the region’s COVID-19 caseload up to three weeks ahead of clinical diagnostic reports, the researchers said. Since people with COVID-19 shed the virus in their stool even before they experience symptoms, wastewater screening acts as an early warning system.
“The wastewater screening results reported on Friday are unlike any the team has seen before,” said Jackie Carr of UC San Diego Health. Both Delta and Omicron variants of the virus were detected in the wastewater.
“This confirms prior county reports that Omicron is already here and circulating in our community,” said Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County’s public health officer.
“This is the steepest curve in viral load we’ve seen since we began screening wastewater in the summer of 2020, and it’s continuing to get worse faster than ever before,” said Rob Knight, professor and wastewater screening leader at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
Researchers and public health officials said they hoped the warning would encourage the local community to step up efforts to help mitigate the expected surge. In addition to wearing face masks in indoor public spaces, as recently mandated by California, they urged people to get their vaccines or boosters if they haven’t already.
They also recommended downloading the CA Notify exposure notification system to smartphones, limiting time spent indoors or unmasked with others, and taking steps to improve indoor ventilation and air filtration.
“In addition, every person in San Diego County needs to have a low threshold for testing right now,” said Christopher Longhurst, chief medical officer and chief digital officer at UC San Diego Health. “Don’t wait. If you feel the slightest symptoms, if you think you might have had contact with someone with COVID-19, if you’ve gathered in crowds without masks, if you’re planning a get together — test, test, test.”
COVID-19 PCR tests are available at UC San Diego Health, various San Diego County sites, other health providers and community pharmacies. At-home rapid antigen tests are available from retail pharmacies and online vendors. Anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 should consult their health care provider.
San Diego County has only one primary wastewater treatment facility, in the Point Loma neighborhood. All excrement flushed away by nearly two-thirds of the county’s residents, including those on the UC San Diego campus, ends up there.
UCSD researchers pick up wastewater samples that had been collected and stored for them by lab technicians at the treatment plant. They bring the samples to a lab at the La Jolla campus to test them for the COVID-19 virus, along with wastewater samples collected from more than 350 campus buildings. All positive samples are sequenced to track viral variants.
The team can detect even a single infected, asymptomatic person living or working in a large building of more than 500 people on the UCSD campus. They have found that notifying the occupants of each building with positive wastewater increases COVID-19 testing rates by as much as 13-fold. The approach has enabled early detection of 85 percent of COVID-19 cases on UCSD’s campus, officials said.
Source: https://www.kusi.com/ucsd-reports-unprecedented-spike-in-wastewater-covid-viral-load/.
USC - as noted above - has given its students a heads-up that it's considering restarting online. And Stanford says it will definitely start its next session online. From the LA Times: [12-16-21, updated 12-17-21]
USC announced Friday that it is considering a remote start to the Spring 2022 semester and will likely ask students to provide proof of COVID-19 booster shots, joining other California higher education institutions in issuing precautions as coronavirus cases rise amid the Omicron variant threat.
After monitoring the rise in COVID-19 cases on campus, in the community and at other higher-education institutions, the university said it is “evaluating a number of options” for the spring semester, including a remote start, and will announce a final decision by the end of next week. It is likely that the university will require COVID-19 boosters, and an official announcement on that is also expected soon...
USC is not alone in preparing students as they leave campus for winter break for possible changes when they return in January. Stanford University announced Thursday that students returning from winter break will go back to remote learning for two weeks and will be required to obtain COVID-19 booster shots, joining other mainly East Coast universities...
Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-16/stanford-university-covid-19-booster-shots-spring-2022.
UPDATE: UCLA says decision will be made this week:
Source: https://covid-19.ucla.edu/.
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