How Campuses Became the New Covid-19 Hotspots – The New York Times

The school tests students who report symptoms and does some random testing. It also requires masks inside campus buildings and where social distancing isnt possible outside. But those restrictions dont apply off campus, where some 8,000 students live and most of the infections seem to have started.

Last weekend, campus police broke up a house party thrown by a coronavirus-positive student who claimed to be quarantining. Last month, the university quarantined all of its athletes after a group of them attended a local house party and 27 tested positive.

Updated Sept. 11, 2020

The latest on how schools are reopening amid the pandemic.

So far, the university has recorded no hospitalizations or deaths among students, a university spokeswoman said. Still, some in the community are nervous.

Everyone goes to the same places in Oxford, and I dont think the students are careful, said Megan Bernstein, 47, who said she had grown up in the town and was there to visit her father.

Trenton Jordan, 21, a junior, agreed. Probably 99.99 percent of the people, when they go to an off-campus party, arent wearing a mask, he said. Most college kids are not worried about the virus.

In Springfield, Mo., David Hinson, executive vice president of Drury University, said he has wrestled with whether to send students home should infections there continue rising. They spiked after school started in August, and he expects they may spike again now, after Labor Day. Most of Drurys 1,416 undergraduates live within three hours of campus, and so could have left the campus bubble to go home over the long weekend.

Drury currently has about 30 active cases, but its cumulative total now about 85 cases has steadily risen. About 875 students are living on campus this fall, in single rooms, down from 1,090 in a normal year. All classes are being held in person, but Mr. Hinson said that as far as he knows, no one has been infected in the classroom. The risk, he said, is greater in the dorms.

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How Campuses Became the New Covid-19 Hotspots - The New York Times