Author: Jeff Albert

From Inside Higher Ed

“The model examines a hypothetical large university of 20,000 students and 2,500 instructors who interact daily for 100 days. The mean class size in the simulation is 24 students, with 90 percent of classes having 50 students or fewer.

Each day in the model, there is a 25 percent chance that one individual on campus not in quarantine, who has not already been infected, can become spontaneously infected by nonuniversity contact, a rate researchers said was rather low compared to other estimates.

In the absence of any intervention at all, the model suggests that all susceptible community members would acquire COVID-19 by the end of the semester, with peak infection rates between 20 and 40 days into the semester, even if the semester begins with no infections.

A standard intervention, consisting of quarantine, contact tracing, universal mask wearing, daily testing of 3 percent of the university population and large classes (30 or more students) moved online, suggests a slightly rosier picture, with infections kept below 66 people in 95 percent of simulations.”

It is possible to do this in a smart way with responsible amounts of risk. #maskup

Of course if the students are not willing to follow guidelines…