One College Is Containing Covid

News Today. Infections in the US increased by one point three percent on Friday, with Iowa, North Dakota, Michigan, and Colorado seeing the biggest single day rises. That's according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News. Yesterday, new cases passed a hundred and twenty six thousand, a global record for a single nation. Johnson and Johnson is about to start clinical trials of its COVID nineteen vaccine in South Africa after getting regulatory approval, according to the

co chair of the study in the country. Meanwhile, scientists monitoring wastewater in one region of the country detected spikes of the coronavirus in the last three weeks. The government is concerned that a lack of compliance with health guidelines may trigger a second wave. Finally, France posted a record number of new virus cases as the nation's health minister, Olivier Veron warned that a violent second wave of the

illness is sweeping the country. He said virus patients now occupy more than eighty five percent of French hospitals initial intensive care facilities. Europe is battling a new surge in the IRS, with France starting a second lockdown just last week and now for today's main story, Cornell University in upstate New York welcomed around twenty four thousand people back

to campus this fall. The idea of students packed into dorms and mingling in classrooms made many people nervous, But while outbreaks have plagued colleges across the country, Cornell has managed to keep a lid on its COVID cases. In fact, the college's test positivity rate has been among the lowest of any college or university in the country doing large scale testing. I spoke with reporter and a court, an alumna of Cornell about how the school has done it.

You know the story with so many colleges and universities around the US for the full term has either been one of online or distance learning, and many of the stories we even have heard about students on campus has been pretty negative news UM with outbreaks and the spread of COVID, but not Cornell. And I was wondering if you might just unpack what what happened at Cornell to make it this success story. Yeah, so I would know.

Cornell isn't the only school that has been able to keep cases very low, but it's what's significant is what a big school it is. Cornell reopened its campus about two thousand people in the late summer, and really what they did was kind of take all the public health measures that are recommended, and in fact, they say that their experience is a testament to the fact that the things that we've been talking to about throughout this whole pandemic, from you know, frequent testing all the way to to

mask wearing and handwashing that they work. Most significant about what Cornell did, I would say is that frequent testing. They're testing about thirty five thousand students, faculty and staff a week. Undergrads are tested as frequently as twice a week. Uh and that they say that has helped them find these people who could be you know, asymptomatic silent spreaders of the virus and and really tamped down on that spread and you know, isolate people and prevent further infections

on campus. Another thing that they really cite for their success has been sort of a souped up version of of contact tracing. They do something called that they call adaptive testing, which is instead of sort of adhering to the strict definition of a of a contact. You know, there are different definitions for contact tracing, but in New York State, it's someone who's been within six ft of someone who had a confirmed COVID nineteen infection for about

ten minutes. So they did something a little bit more expanse of They did do contact tracing, but they also did this thing where they looked at people who might have been exposed but weren't technically close contact. So if you're living on a dorm floor and you turn out to have COVID nineteen, they might test everyone on that

floor because you're all sharing a bathroom. If you're on a hockey team, maybe you weren't technically within six ft of someone for ten minutes, but you know, you're likely spending time around them and maybe you could be infected, so maybe you test the whole hockey team. So they say, this is something that kind of goes above and beyond the call of duty and you know, help them basically locked down the chains of transmission on campus. I was wondering if you might go into just actually how low

the infection rate has been on campus. And I mean, among those few infections that Cornell has seen, where are we seeing transmission coming from. Is this something that students are being exposed in the classroom or or is it coming really from somewhere else. Just to start off with, I just pulled up Cornell's COVID dashboard and right now their positivity rate is point zero four percent, so you know, point zero four percent of their test return positive. That's

really good. And in a recent week, a couple of weeks ago, it was actually as low as point zero zero six percent, So they were joking that they would have to add another, you know, decimal place to the online dashboard. Um, it was so low. You know, if you look at how many cases they've had since they reopened, it's been about hundred and seventy one cases from mid August to basically now through November four. That's really significant because that is very low, and they do have a

lot of people, you know, thousand people on campus. You know, things didn't look like they were going to go quite this way when I first started my reporting, though, you know, I talked to a lot of people in August before campus reopened, and the plan was constantly changing. There was a lot of anxiety among people in the unity, you know, students, their parents, faculty members, because it looked like a big

risk that Cornell was taking. They were bringing all these people to upstate New York, you know, at the time had been very much untouched by COVID nineteen. It was very you know, rates were very low, and so it seemed like things could go pretty awry. And in fact, you know, as students were coming back to campus, there was an early cluster of cases on campus that really raised a lot of alarm bells, you know, which was actually tied to student athletes socializing without the proper you know,

social distancing and mask wearing. Um but you know, Cornell again really credits this aggressive testing and and contact tracing to helping kind of stand that chain of transmission. And in fact, you know, they did a lot of interesting modeling around how infection good spread around campus, really plotting out a lot of different scenarios. That's actually how they

ended up doing so much testing. They realized they needed to in order to keep infection low, and they set out a couple of different scenarios for how you know, infections could spread. And the actual cases on campus have actually stayed so low that they've been far lower than even the most optimistic scenario, which I think is is

really a testament to to what they've done. And you know, you've mentioned a lot of this plan, um, and and perhaps their success does revolve around the amount of testing that's going on, and and that's quite a significant amount of testing. I was just curious how is the university handling this this amount of regular testing. Cornell actually set up a new lab in its veterinary school to do

human testing. Interestingly, a number of colleges and universities have actually done this because um, this mode of you know, the common mode of COVID nineteen testing is is something called polymaries chain reaction tests, and they're actually often you to look for disease and animals UM. The big thing that they did, and other colleges have done this too, is that they did something called pooling, where you put multiple samples together um and process them at the same time.

This is something that works actually best when you don't have a lot of infection on campus, as Cornell has. You know, it's important to note that this has been a big push for Cornell, and they're running their lab you know, practically seven and and it's been difficult. You know, they set up all these centers around campus for people

to get their samples collected. You know, it's a it's a nasal swab, and it's something that you know, took up a lot of their resources, but also you know a lot of participation from the community to go in and get tested so frequently. And you've raised a really

important point. I think that many other colleges and universities might be looking to Cornell's policy because, I mean, in all honesty, Cornell has been able to welcome students back, They've been able to collect, particularly from the financial angle room and board rents from the students that are back on campus. Is this something that perhaps other college campuses other universities can look to Cornell as perhaps a model for how they can apply this policy on their own campuses.

You know, a lot of cynics and skeptics when colleges said that they were going to reopen, pointed to the fact that college has had a real financial incentive to reopen. You know, it's hard to justify charging a lot of tuition when your students are basically, you know, at home, living with their parents, you know, taking classes online. I think for Cornell what's important to note is that they did have advantages and they and they acknowledge those advantages.

You know, from the fact that Ithaca is a pretty remote location. Ithaca when you're driving up is really a lot of cows and fields. So you know, that's an advance Didge because you don't have a lot of people coming and going from other places where they can bring the virus. Although Cornell has had people bring the virus that way to campus and they've found it using that testing.

And there are other advantages just conferred by their you know, financial and scientific resources that are important to note and and again might be hard for other schools to replicate, particularly if they don't you know, have these kinds of resources. And I mean here we are. It's early November, but the end of the fall semester is in sight. Students are about to leave to to go on holiday, to go back to their family and friends all over the

US and the world. Is this going to affect Cornell's plan for the spring or is this fall scenario what Cornell is expecting to adopt in the spring. Yeah, Cornell is planning US spring semester, you know in person. You know, they're hoping to bring even more students back this time, hoping to do more classes in person um and they have a lot more time to plan now than they

did last time. A lot of things were really quickly changing right before the semester began um, including you know, a lot of students were coming from states that had been put on New York State's quarantine list, and so that made it very difficult logistically for everyone to come back. I think it's important to think about also how things will be different in the spring semester. You know, they're

planning on starting classes in February. You know, the weather in February and Ithaca can be quite cold, and as we all know, winter could be a real time of spreading COVID because of those cold temperatures, bringing people to gather inside more where they could you know, are more likely also to spread the virus. So you know, it's going to bring a new slate of challenges for Cornell. And in fact, right now the university is already seeing

um infection rates in surrounding communities on the rise. And so it kind of went from the situation where the community was worried about Cornell bringing COVID to their backyards and now Cornell is is starting to warily look at the community and say, maybe people are going to get sick, you know, in our surrounding areas, and they've they've started to see some of that already. That was Emma Corp.

And that's it for our show today. For coverage of the outbreak from one and twenty bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com slash coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topha Foreheads, Jordan gas Pure, Magnus Henrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported

by Emma Corp. Original music by Leo sidrin Our. Editors are Rick Shine and Francesco Levi. Francesca Levi is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.