College Openings in the United States Increased Mobility and COVID-19 Incidence

Abstract

Most U.S. colleges have reopened campuses for in-person teaching this Fall, following rapid closures at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic this Spring. Despite administrative efforts at mitigation and preventive measures, the large congregation of students within close quarters has caused public health concerns. In this paper, we examine college reopenings' association with changes in human mobility within campuses and in COVID-19 incidence in the counties of the campuses, over a two-week period before and after college reopenings. To estimate the daily reproduction number (Rt), we used a Bayesian framework. Using a difference-in-differences design comparing areas with a college campus, before and after reopening, to areas without a campus, we find that after college reopenings for face-to-face instruction, COVID-19 incidence in the county increased on average by a statistically significant 0.024 per thousand residents, following increases in mobility on campus. Similarly, we estimated increased transmission locally after reopening, with a rising trend in Rt. The increase in cases was larger in counties with colleges that drew students from areas with increasing incidence rates.

The effect of eviction moratoria on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2

“…When we assigned even a small proportion of evicted households to a catchall category of shelters and encampments (Figure S12), with an elevated number of contacts, evictions unpredictably gave rise to epidemics within the epidemic, which then, predictably, spread throughout the city. These results are qualitatively in line with the effects of other high-contact subpopulations, such as those created by students in dorms [57,58] or among prisoners [59–61].…”

Are college campuses superspreaders? A data-driven modeling study

“…This is particularly critical in the United Kingdom and the United States, where shared dorms or residence halls on campus are an essential part of the college experience whereas college students in Europe generally live off campus in rented apartments. Shortly after the beginning of the fall term, many colleges that had invited their students back to campus experienced a massive spike of new infections (Andersen et al 2020). This raised the question under which conditions college campuses can reopen safely and to which extent they display superspreading characteristics (Hubler & Hartocollis 2020).…”

“…Many institutions that reopened in the fall have seen massive surges once students returned to campus, some quickly returned to online instruction, others have not yet reopened to date (The Chronicle of Higher Education 2020). Understandably, the question whether and how to re-open schools, colleges, and universities remains an ongoing debate (Andersen et al 2020). Not only student well-being, quality of education, and public health, but also revenue for institutions and their local economies are heavily affected by the decision and timing of campus reopening (Cheng et al 2020).…”

High resolution proximity statistics as early warning for US universities reopening during COVID-19

“…Given the disproportionate representation of college-age individuals in the mobility data, their return to university campuses, especially rural ones leads to strong spikes in interactions. As shown in [5], their arrivals from higher incidence areas may have seeded outbreaks which subsequently caused case spikes observable at the county level. While a similar phenomenon could have played out in urban areas, given the background number of interactions these may be difficult to observe and thus fail to provide strong early warning signals for case spikes.…”

“…High resolution mobility data have become increasingly available and have been shown to be relevant for infectious disease modeling and forecasting across different phases [11, 6]. Anderson et al [5] have also used such GPS traces to show the relationship to case spikes in some universities. While their focus was on understanding the impact of in-person instruction and inflow of students from across the country, the demographic characteristics of the region were not studied in detail.…”