Empty and quiet, campuses report more COVID-19

Their sprawling campuses have been empty since March, buildings shuttered, classes delivered online, and employees by and large working from home.

Even so, the University of Pittsburgh and West Virginia University report that, between them, 26 students and employees have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days. A third institution, Penn State University, reported something even more sobering on Thursday: the death of a 21-yearold undergraduate from COVID-19 complications, its first student death linked to the virus.

Information about the cases is limited, though each has set in motion contact tracers and potential quarantining of anyone with whom they had contact. Though not necessarily unexpected, the infections on or near largely deserted campuses likely will draw close scrutiny by those charged with safely returning tens of thousands of students and employees for fall semester amid a pandemic.

Pitt’s nine new student cases and four faculty/staff cases since last Friday are in addition to at least six earlier ones, according to university data. WVU reported 13 new cases as of Thursday, with at least 10 students who had tested positive for the virus.

Even before those cases became known, Penn State students and employees were mourning the loss of Juan Garcia, a student in the university’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, who became ill June 19 and tested positive for coronavirus on June 20 after traveling home to Allentown, officials said. He had been living off-campus in State College.

At Pitt, officials did not specify where the infected individuals were, except to say they are “known to have been on the Pittsburgh Campus in the last fourteen days,” according to the university’s website.

“These community members are isolating in a designated campus location with medical support and oversight, or at their off-campus residence, until they recover,’’ it added.

At WVU, quarantining and other precautions also were underway, administrators said.

“Although investigations and contact tracing are ongoing, several of those students are known to have been on the WVU Health Sciences Morgantown and Eastern Campuses in the last seven days,” WVU said in a statement. “No patients have been exposed to any of the affected students.”

Even as campuses nationally shut down this spring, leaders said essential services, including certain kinds of research support, would require some staff or students be on campus. A limited number of students would be in dorms because they were unable to return home.

Campus libraries have closed, though many offer remote services.

“There are certain labs or limited instruction occurring, especially among graduate students and researchers,” WVU spokeswoman April Kaull said Friday. “Some activities like that are still occurring on campus.”

College football players typically are on campus, too.

At Pitt, for instance, Panthers players arrived June 8 for the university’s “phased return to voluntary football activities.” They were to be quarantined in their apartments or dorms for 14 days, Jennifer Brown, Pitt’s senior associate athletic director for sports medicine, told the Post-Gazette last month.

E.J. Borghetti, a Pitt athletic department spokesman, would not say Friday if all had cleared quarantine, or if any players or coaching staff were among those who have since tested positive. He said Pitt provides COVID-19 data encompassing the overall campus community of students, faculty and staff, while limiting specificity to protect individual privacy.

“It will not be specific to a department or segment of the student body due to privacy considerations,” he said.

Ms. Kaull also declined comment when asked if WVU football players were among those who had tested positive.

This fall, campuses large and small, public and private, will test the effectiveness of intricate plans to resume college life in the era of COVID-19. Many will use a mix of in-person and remote instruction with smaller in-person class sizes, dining halls reimagined for social distancing and dorms subject to reduced occupancy.

Pitt, for instance, expects to spend $22 million on leasing hotel rooms in Oakland, so it can reduce residence hall occupancy on its main Oakland campus.

Each plan balances what officials say is students’ clear preference for a residential campus experience against the risk of infection. Faculty and staff must be protected too, and employee concerns about the risks have gone public at some universities, including Penn State.

Colleges and their inhabitants regularly see arrivals from off campus, from family members to delivery drivers. Those living and working on campus leave for appointments, to socialize and shop, or for weekends at home.

The resulting risk is a fact of life, not just on massive campuses but on smaller ones, too. April Thompson, vice president of student life and dean of students at Allegheny College in Meadville, summed it up this spring as she and top administrators weighed their eventual decision to reopen.

“We aren’t going to be able to build a force field around campus and lock everybody in.”