In the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Fall semester has completed at college
campuses across the United States. To confront this crisis, universities have employed widely
varying policies regarding instruction and infection testing. Armed with data on cases numbers
and positivity rates, researchers now have the opportunity to reflect and consider the
effectiveness of these policies.
University COVID-19 mitigation policies have primarily operated on two fronts: shifting the level
of in-person instruction and enacting infection testing and isolation programs. The effect of
these policies and practices i s reflected i n the heterogeneity of reported campus case numbers.
A CDC report found that the incidence of COVID-19 at large institutions of higher education was
highly dependent on whether the institution had primarily remote or i n-person instruction.
Further, campus outbreaks have been l inked to transmission i n their neighboring communities,
leading researchers to label some universities as ‘superspreaders’.
Simple transmission models can provide insight into the efficacy of public health policies across
a spectrum of organization sizes and types. Model analysis produces measures which
quantify the outbreak potential of a pathogen i n a given population, generating hypotheses that
can be tested against data. However, there i s a major gap i n the application of population level
transmission models to complex and heterogeneous organizations like universities.
People
Funding Source
Midas Coordination Center Urgent Grant Program - Supplemental