UT will no longer alert of COVID-19 exposure to everyone in an affected classroom – Austin American-Statesman

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University of Texas students will no longer be notified if someone in their class tests positive for the coronavirus unless they were in close proximity with the positive case for more than 15 minutes.

University officials said there is limited value inCOVID-19 notifications to an entire classsinceall UT community membersshould follow campus COVID-19 guidelines such as weekly testing, masking indoors and social distancing when possible regardless of potential exposure.

We have found, however, that the guidance many people receive through these notifications is the same as the advice we give all community members regardless of exposure, UTs chief medical officer Terrance Hines said Thursday. Given the repetition, we will discontinue this practice.

UT officials still will notify those who were in close contact with a confirmed case for longer than 15 minutes.

UT also will discontinue notifications for university housing and student organizations.University leaderswill divert resources used for the notification system to contact tracing and increasing testing capacity on campus.

However, for circumstances in which a pattern of cases necessitates broader communication to a specific population, we will notify them accordingly, Hines said.

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Art Markman, head of the academic working group for COVID-19 planning, saidit can sometimes take a week to send COVID-19 exposure notifications because of the time required to conduct contact tracing or delays in COVID-19 test results from outside providers, which diminishes an alert's effectiveness.

It wasn't anything that was going to be helpful for anybody, Markman said. We understand how much everybody wants the information. Weall advocated pretty strongly for it at the start of the semester, as well, but when put into practice, we realized we were not providing people with information that could be used at all.

Lauren Nelson, an English graduate student, said sheunderstands the logic behind switching resourcesfrom the exposure notification system to contact tracing and COVID-19 testing but believes UT has the capacity to do both.

I'm not sure why siphoning resources from one area and putting them somewhere else is necessarily the best solution when it literally comes to our lives and our safety, said Nelson, who is also an assistant instructor in the English department.

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Nelson said the exposure notifications served as a reminder to stay vigilant of the spreading virus.

"Why not give us all of the information that we can have because the worst thing is that more students would get tested," Nelson said. "This feels like the latest in a series of events that effectively offload responsibility for communityhealth and safety."

Students and faculty have been critical of university leaders for not mandating masks or vaccines amid the resurgence of the coronavirus.

Still, the surge of cases that some feared has not come to pass so far. As of Thursday, UT hadrecorded about 400COVID-19 cases since the first day of classes a month ago fewer than 1% of students.

Staff writer Megan Menchaca contributed to this report.

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UT will no longer alert of COVID-19 exposure to everyone in an affected classroom - Austin American-Statesman