How Colleges Can Keep the Coronavirus Off Campus – The New York Times
Schools must build cultures of physical distancing to protect campuses.
Colleges and universities like ours are hoping to reopen campuses and resume in-person instruction in the fall, but they face significant physical and logistical obstacles in protecting their students. Residential colleges are sometimes described as “landlocked cruise ships,” because students live, eat, study and socialize together, often in close quarters. Under ordinary circumstances, that is a good thing. But such tightly knit campus communities are tailor-made for spreading an easily transmissible illness like the coronavirus.
The American College Health Association and others have laid out a basic process for reopening: Test all students on arrival, then again after one to two weeks, and periodically throughout the semester (though where colleges will get all these tests and the personnel to administer them remains a mystery).
Isolate students who test positive, trace all close contacts and quarantine those exposed for two weeks. Maintain physical distancing protocols by reconfiguring residence halls, dining facilities, classrooms and other gathering places.