As college students return, infection rates begin to soar
Outbreaks are increasingly straining relations between universities and their towns
Just two weeks after students started returning to Ball State University last month, the surrounding county had become Indiana’s coronavirus epicenter.
Out of nearly 600 students tested for the virus, more than half have been positive. Dozens of infections have been blamed on off-campus parties, prompting university officials to admonish students.
Similar examples abound in other college towns across the nation. Among the 50 U.S. counties with the highest concentrations of students and overall populations of at least 50,000, 20 have consistently reported higher rates of new virus cases than their states have since Sept. 1, according to an Associated Press analysis.
Dozens of schools across California have been hit. San Diego State University has reported 667 confirmed cases among students — more
“More stringent and mandatory restrictions will be imposed if students do not comply and break the transmission cycle.” — Jeffrey Zayach, executive director of Boulder County Public Health
than any other school in the state.
A college COVID-19 tracker by The New York Times shows that nearby UC San Diego had reported 237 cases as of Sept. 10. USC recorded 358. To the north, UC Berkeley reported 166 cases while Stanford reported 137. Cal State Chico recorded 145.
The ballooning numbers are prompting concern among some businesses that fear they could be forced to shutter if the schools don’t find a way to stop the spread of COVID-19. The state puts counties into four tiers, which dictate what can open. Right now, San Diego County is in the red tier, the second most restrictive.
But San Diego State cases have helped push the county’s new case rate up to the point that if things don’t change, the county could be forced back into the most restrictive purple tier — which would mean new business closures.
This week, the county said it would request that San Diego State cases be excluded from the state’s analysis, which is published every Tuesday. While Gov. Gavin Newsom has pushed back at the idea of removing college cases, state officials have promised to look at local context when making decisions about where counties belong on the state’s tiered system.
Health officials fear that surges among college students will spread to more vulnerable people — older ones and those with underlying health problems — and trigger a new wave of cases and hospitalizations. Some worry that colleges could overwhelm hospitals already bracing for increasing cases of COVID-19 and flu this fall and winter.
For many colleges, the return to campus was a carefully orchestrated process that took months to plan and millions of dollars to pull off. But as safe as they’ve made their campuses, many colleges have struggled to curb off-campus gatherings that have been tied to thousands of infections.
Parties were blamed for dozens of cases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which brought students back in early August only to send them home weeks later.
The outbreaks are increasingly straining relations between universities and their towns.
Amid a spike in cases at the University of Colorado at Boulder, county health authorities Tuesday urged all students to quarantine for two weeks. Students and others at the university have accounted for 76% of the county’s 663 positive cases over the past two weeks, officials said.
“More stringent and mandatory restrictions will be imposed if students do not comply and break the transmission cycle,” Jeffrey Zayach, executive director of Boulder County Public Health, warned in a letter to students.
Some cities have tightened rules at bars to discourage students from gathering. As cases surged at Illinois State, the town’s mayor issued an order requiring all bar customers to be seated to be served. He also limited gatherings near campus to no more than 10 people.
Still, residents and officials in many college towns are rooting for universities to work through outbreaks and avoid campus closings that could further hurt the local economy.
Ball State, roughly 60 miles from Indianapolis, has about 22,000 students on a campus of red brick buildings and sleek, modern dorms in Muncie, where the university is the city’s second-largest employer after Ball Memorial Hospital.
On campus last week, sophomore La’Tricia Williams, wearing a mask, said she was glad to be back instead of sitting on the couch with her laptop at her family’s home, taking online classes.
“But I get that it comes with some risk,” she said. “You can give students a whole bunch of rules for what they should and shouldn’t do while they’re back at the school, but they’re not going to stop doing certain things here or going out into the community.”
While some colleges have sent students home amid outbreaks, many others are digging in. Some have moved classes online but urged students to stay where they are until cases drop.
Among them is the University of Notre Dame, which paused in-person classes Aug. 18 and moved them online amid a surge that saw as many as 89 new cases per day. Weeks later, after a sharp decrease in infections, classes have started to resume on campus.