Virus clusters at French universities give Europe a lesson
PARIS, France (AP) — Can mandatory masks offer enough protection in lecture halls so packed that late arrivals have to sit on the floor?
That’s what worries many students at the centuries-old Sorbonne University in Paris, as the coronavirus is on the rebound across France.
At least a dozen COVID-19 clusters have emerged since French campuses and classrooms opened this month. The clutches of cases are a warning sign for countries elsewhere in Europe, where most universities are readying to resume teaching and research in coming weeks.
“We go back to university in conditions that are a bit extreme, and we fear we might get COVID-19,” Elise Gilbert, 20, who is studying literature at the Sorbonne, said of the overcrowding students encountered.
France’s experience so far stands in contrast to what’s happening in Britain, where virus-driven changes on campuses mean university life will look a lot different this term. Germany and Italy are also adapting their delivery of higher education in response to the pandemic.
The French Government was determined to get people back to classrooms to bridge education inequities that the pandemic has exacerbated. The Government also urged workers to return to offices and job sites to resuscitate the economy and to “learn to live with the virus”.
At universities, the main change this year is mandatory mask-wearing at all times. But keeping physical distances appears impossible in many places.
Some students are raising their grievances on Twitter, using the hashtag #Balancetafac (“Squeal on your uni”) to share pictures of packed classrooms and corridors.
They describe situations where there’s no soap to wash their hands and where rooms, sometimes with no windows to provide fresh air, are not being disinfected between lectures.
“We are doing our best to respect social distancing, but sometimes we can’t,” Corentin Renoult, a 20-year-old Sorbonne journalism student, said.
Nevertheless, the Sorbonne is maintaining in-person classes for the time being.
“It’s quite hard at the moment because we haven’t got any extra means,” Franziska Heimburger, assistant director of the university’s English department, said. “We don’t have any more teachers, we don’t have any more space, so we basically have to teach as best we can.”
Heimburger said instructors won’t penalise students for pandemic-related absences. “I’ve had students who live with their grandparents and they are worried of taking (the virus) back home with them,” she said.
Many students also expressed anger when French authorities appeared to blame the country’s recent virus outbreaks mostly on students attending parties.
One factor in the overcrowding is more students are attending French universities. The number of students enrolled jumped by 270,000 to 2.8 million after the exam which allows high school students access to universities was cancelled due to the pandemic. Students were instead granted access based on school grades, and many more qualified than usual.
The safety precautions differ broadly among schools. Some have strict public health measures in place, with small class size limits and a mix of in-person and online classes.
But others have had to temporarily shut down after dozens of students tested positive in multiple sites, from engineering to medical and business schools. They moved teaching online, as when the country was locked down at the height of its epidemic which has killed some 31,000 people in France.
In the UK, most universities do not begin their fall terms until late September or early October, and are readying big changes.
At the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where the fall semester began Monday, many classes are being taught online — other than laboratory sessions or other practical instruction where hands-on learning is essential. Student societies are barred from meeting in person, and many students arriving from overseas will have to quarantine for two weeks in line with government protocols.
At University College London (UCL), only a quarter of the buildings will be occupied at one time. Teaching spaces will incorporate social distancing and everyone must wear face masks. The university created an app for students to alert authorities if they have symptoms and plans to test up to 1,000 students and staff a day to keep the campus safe.
“I’ve got a public health expert team that are advising me when it’s appropriate to extend testing beyond those that are immediately symptomatic,’’ Michael Arthur, the president and provost at UCL. “So I think we’re reasonably confident if we do have an outbreak — and I’m sure we will have, we’re just playing with statistics — that we can move in and contain it very rapidly.”
Student housing has been adapted to allow those who test positive to self-isolate.
In Germany, most universities won’t start lectures before next month, and they have introduced numerous rules to ensure distancing, increased hygiene and bans on students’ parties. They are also expanding online teaching.
Student associations in the Dutch university city of Delft sent a letter this week calling on students to “take responsibility” for reining in infections
that are spreading quickly, particularly in student housing.
“The initiative is with students to prevent a local lockdown,” the associations said. “It’s not too late, but time is pressing.”
Many Italian universities are reopening with distance learning this fall. Priority for physical classrooms was being given to first-year students, to aid their transition.
In the United States, dozens of universities have emerged as virus hot spots. Although students are being spaced apart in classrooms and dining halls, the virus has continued to spread in cramped dorm halls and through off-campus parties that have been blamed for thousands of cases.
The surge has prompted some universities to send students home and cancel in-person instruction for the rest of the term. US officials are urging against that approach, saying it could spark outbreaks elsewhere. Instead, universities are being urged to keep students where they are and temporarily move classes online.
HOUSTON, United States (AP) — Sitting across from her lawyer at an immigration detention centre in rural Georgia, Mileidy Cardentey Fernandez unbuttoned her jail jumpsuit to show the scars on her abdomen. There were three small, circular marks.
The 39-year-old woman from Cuba was told only that she would undergo an operation to treat her ovarian cysts, but a month later, she’s still not sure what procedure she got. After Cardentey repeatedly requested her medical records to find out, Irwin County Detention Center gave her more than 100 pages showing a diagnosis of cysts but nothing from the day of the surgery.
“The only thing they told me was: ‘You’re going to go to sleep and when you wake up, we will have finished ‘,” Cardentey said this week in a phone interview.
Cardentey kept her hospital bracelet. It has the date, August 14, and part of the doctor’s name, Dr Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist linked this week to allegations of unwanted hysterectomies and other procedures done on detained immigrant women that jeopardise their ability to have children.
An Associated Press review of medical records for four women and interviews with lawyers revealed growing allegations that Amin performed surgeries and other procedures on detained immigrants that they never sought or didn’t fully understand. Although some procedures could be justified based on problems documented in the records, the women’s lack of consent or knowledge raises severe legal and ethical issues, lawyers and medical experts said.
Amin has performed surgery or other gynecological treatment on at least eight women detained at Irwin County Detention Center since 2017, including one hysterectomy, said Andrew Free, an immigration and civil rights lawyer working with attorneys to investigate medical treatment at the detention centre. Doctors on behalf of the attorneys are examining new records and more women are coming forward to report their treatment by Amin, Free said.
“The indication is there’s a systemic lack of truly informed and legally valid consent to perform procedures that could ultimately result — intentionally or unintentionally — in sterilisation,” he said.
The AP’S review did not find evidence of mass hysterectomies as alleged in a widely shared complaint filed by a nurse at the detention center. Dawn Wooten alleged that many detained women were taken to an unnamed gynecologist whom she labeled the “uterus collector” because of how many hysterectomies he performed.
The complaint sparked a furious reaction from congressional Democrats and an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. It also evoked comparisons to previous government-sanctioned efforts in the US to sterilise people to supposedly improve society — victims who were disproportionately poor, mentally disabled, American Indian, black or other people of colour. Thirtythree states had forced sterilisation programmes in the 20th century.
But a lawyer who helped file the complaint said she never spoke to any women who had hysterectomies. Priyanka Bhatt, staff attorney at the advocacy group Project South, told The
Washington Post that she included the hysterectomy allegations because she wanted to trigger an investigation to determine if they were true.
“I have a responsibility to listen to the women I’ve spoken with,” Bhatt told the AP. She said one woman alleged that she was repeatedly pressured to have a hysterectomy and that authorities said they would not pay for her to get a second opinion.
Amin told The Intercept, which first reported Wooten’s complaint, that he has only performed one or two hysterectomies in the past three years. His attorney, Scott Grubman, said in a statement: “We look forward to all of the facts coming out, and are confident that once they do, Dr Amin will be cleared of any wrongdoing.”
Grubman did not respond to new questions Thursday.
In a statement yesterday, ICE Acting Director Tony Pham said: “If there is any truth to these allegations, it is my commitment to make the corrections necessary to ensure we continue to prioritise the health, welfare and safety of ICE detainees.”
Lasalle Corrections, which operates the jail, said in a statement that it “strongly refutes these allegations and any implications of misconduct”.
Women housed at Irwin County Detention Center who needed a gynecologist were typically taken to Amin, according to medical records provided to the AP by Free and lawyer Alexis Ruiz, who represents Cardentey.
Interviews with detainees and their lawyers suggest some women came to fear the doctor.
Records reviewed by the AP show one woman was given a psychiatric evaluation the same day she refused to undergo a surgical procedure known as dilation and curettage. Commonly known as a D&C, it removes tissue from the uterus and can be used as a treatment for excessive bleeding. A note written on letterhead from Amin’s office said the woman was concerned.
According to a written summary of her psychiatric evaluation, the woman said, “I am nervous about my upcoming procedure.”
The summary says she denied needing mental health care and added: “I am worried because I saw someone else after they had surgery and what I saw scared me.”
The AP also reviewed records for a woman who was given a hysterectomy. She reported irregular bleeding and was taken to see Amin for a D&C. A lab study of the tissue found signs of early cancer, called carcinoma. Amin’s notes indicate the woman agreed 11 days later to the hysterectomy.
Free, who spoke to the woman, said she felt pressured by Amin and “didn’t have the opportunity to say no” or speak to her family before the procedure.
Doctors told the AP that a hysterectomy could have been appropriate due to the carcinoma, though there may have been less intrusive options available.
Lawyers for both women asked that their names be withheld for fear of retaliation by immigration authorities.
In another case, Pauline Binam, a 30-year-old woman who was brought to the US from Cameroon when she was two, saw Amin after experiencing an irregular menstrual cycle and was told to have a D&C, said her attorney, Van Huynh.
When she woke up from the surgery, Huynh said, she was told Amin had removed one of her two Fallopian tubes, which connect the uterus to the ovaries and are necessary to conceive a child. Binam’s medical records indicate that the doctor discovered the tube was swollen.
“She was shocked and sort of confronted him on that — that she hadn’t given her consent for him to proceed with that,” Huynh said. “The reply that he gave was they were in there anyway and found there was this problem.”
While women can potentially still conceive with one intact tube and ovary, doctors who spoke to the AP said removal of the tube was likely unnecessary and should never have happened without Binam’s consent.
The doctors also questioned how Amin discovered the swollen tube because performing a D&C would not normally involve exploring a woman’s fallopian tubes.
Dr Julie Graves, a family medicine and public health physician in Florida, called the process “absolutely abhorrent”.