Are college campuses superspreaders? A data-driven modeling study

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to present enormous challenges for colleges and universities and strategies for save reopening remain a topic of ongoing debate. Many institutions that reopened cautiously in the fall experienced a massive wave of infections and colleges were soon declared as the new hotspots of the pandemic. However, the precise effects of college outbreaks on their immediate neighborhood remain largely unknown. Here we show that the first two weeks of instruction present a high-risk period for campus outbreaks and that these outbreaks tend to spread into the neighboring communities. By integrating a classical mathematical epidemiology model and Bayesian learning, we learned the dynamic reproduction number for 30 colleges from their daily case reports. Of these 30 institutions, 14 displayed a spike of infections within the first two weeks of class, with peak seven-day incidences well above 1,000 per 100,000, an order of magnitude larger than the nation-wide peaks of 70 and 150 during the first and second waves of the pandemic. While most colleges were able to rapidly reduce the number of new infections, many failed to control the spread of the virus beyond their own campus: Within only two weeks, 17 campus outbreaks translated directly into peaks of infection within their home counties. These findings suggests that college campuses are at risk to develop an extreme incidence of COVID-19 and become superspreaders for neighboring communities. We anticipate that tight test-trace-quarantine strategies, flexible transition to online instruction, and–most importantly–compliance with local regulations will be critical to ensure a safe campus reopening after the winter break.

COVID-19 Vaccine Acceptance among College Students: A Theory-Based Analysis

“…Furthermore, a comparison of mean scores between the two groups yielded a significant difference for the hesitant group when compared to those who were non-hesitant. The low levels of belief in the advantages of the COVID-19 vaccine in the hesitant group point to the need for health promotion programming to convince this group of the advantages of vaccination not only for their benefit but also the greater benefits to society [ 14 ].…”

“…College students are vulnerable to SARS-Cov-2 infection due to a multitude of factors: communal residency in on-campus and off-campus housing, the reopening of college campuses and activities, and the necessity to travel between their home and campus. Furthermore, college campuses have been identified as at risk to develop cases of COVID-19 and have the potential to become “superspreaders” with likely impacts on neighboring communities [ 14 ]. Research among college students in Italy regarding COVID-19 vaccine intention shows that certain student sub-groups may have greater vaccination intention, including medical students, students with previous uptake of flu vaccination, students with a higher level of concern about COVID-19, and students with high vulnerability to COVID-19 [ 15 ].…”

Modeling COVID-19 spread in small colleges

“…We believe that 80% total infections after a semester is conservative given that the population lacks innate antibodies against COVID-19 [ 14 ] and the average reproduction number R 0 with no intervention is quite high [ 15 – 17 ] in some settings. Additionally college settings are believed to be worse for COVID-19 spread [ 18 ] than in larger communities with less overlap between residents such as cities. Note that a related study [ 9 ] predicted that 100% of the campus population would become infected about halfway into a semester with no intervention.…”

Ethical and Practical Implications of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy among College Students: A Pilot Study

“…College students are vulnerable to SARS-Cov-2 infection due to a multitude of factors including communal residency in on-campus and off-campus housing, the reopening of college campuses and activities, and the necessity to travel between their home and campus (Lu, et al, 2020). Furthermore, college campuses have been identified as at risk to become "superspreaders" with likely impacts on neighboring communities (Lu, et al, 2020). The majority of U.S. universities will be requiring students to get the COVID-19 vaccine in order to return to campus for the fall 2021 semester.…”

“…Colleges and universities face significant challenges in opening up safely in the face of the pandemic. Findings from Lu et al (2020) suggest that many institutions that had cautiously reopened in the fall of 2020 had experienced massive incidences of COVID-19 infections and were declared as hotspots for the pandemic. As such, college campuses pose risk to develop extreme cases of COVID-19 and are feared to become super spreaders for their neighboring communities.…”