‘A lot of crossed fingers’: Purdue’s campus reopening ‘manageable’ so far, as other schools retreat, higher ed monitors Mitch Daniels’ plan – Journal & Courier
WEST LAFAYETTE – Two things were happening at Purdue’s West Lafayette campus last week, about the time another major, four-year school – this time Big Ten rival University of Wisconsin – pivoted from its in-person, residential campus reopening plans to deal with spikes in student coronavirus cases during the first weeks of classes.
The first, Purdue set its spring semester schedule. It was more than a hint that the university was thinking beyond the fall semester and that the university was finding things – as Dr. Esteban Ramirez, chief medical officer at the Protect Purdue Health Center, put it three weeks into Purdue’s highly-watched reopening effort – “manageable, so far.”
Even with 389 student cases since Aug. 1 – including 184 recorded in the most recent seven days – Purdue’s campus testing positive rate of 3.8 percent over the past week was in range of Tippecanoe County’s rate of 3.9 percent and below the state’s 5.1 percent.
The second, in a tip to trends seen on other campuses, Ramirez said the university was still negotiating to add to the 884 isolation beds available on and near campus for students who test positive for COVID-19.