Will students take the virus home?

Thanksgiving will empty campuses across the nation

As Thanksgiving approaches, millions of Americans are weighing the risk of pandemic travel against the yearning to visit friends and family. But one group seems all but certain to be heading home in large numbers just in time for turkey and holiday gatherings: college students.

Since the start of the fall semester, most universities have planned to end inperson classes before Thanksgiving and require students to finish the term remotely, partly to avoid an expected wave of coldweather infections. That means that in a couple of weeks, hundreds of thousands of students will be streaming back to hometowns until the spring semester begins.

So what are colleges and universities doing to reduce the chances that those students might carry the coronavirus with them?

As has been true with so much of the nation’s pandemic response, the answer is a patchwork of policies, with a minority of schools mandating that students test negative for the coronavirus before they can leave campus — and many more offering little more than optional testing and advice.

Indiana University in Bloomington — where dozens of fraternity and sorority houses had to quarantine in September — will open its weekly surveillance testing to all of the 42,000 students living on or near campus. But the testing will be voluntary for most.

Penn State University — where off-campus parties around the football opener Oct. 24 drew a rebuke from President Eric Barron — will offer free exit tests and strongly encourage students to get them but will not make them mandatory for the more than 13,500 students in university housing or the tens of thousands living off-campus.

“We have found that students are responding well to our voluntary, convenient and free walk-up testing sites,” the university said in a statement.

The University of Michigan — where infections recently spiked so severely that local health officials issued a stay-in-place order — will make exit tests mandatory for some 5,000 undergraduates in university housing but voluntary for thousands more living offcampus.

At the other end of the spectrum, a smaller number of schools are insisting on exit testing.

New York state’s university system — whose Oneonta campus ceased inperson classes in September after more than 700 students tested positive for the virus — will require “all students using on-campus facilities in any capacity” to test negative for the virus within 10 days of their departure and to quarantine according to county health rules if they test positive, whether they are on or off-campus.

The plan will entail testing about 140,000 students at SUNY’s 64 colleges and universities.

And in Massachusetts, where cases have been surging, Boston University has asked students not to leave campus, period, until Dec. 10, when classes end.

Epidemiologists recommend that travelers quarantine themselves before traveling for at least a week and receive one or more negative coronavirus test results within three days of departure. Upon arrival, they should again quarantine until receiving one or more negative test results over three days.

Those who do not test should quarantine for 14 days before and after traveling.

Calling unive rsities’ Thanksgiving plans “all over the map,” A. David Paltiel, a professor of health policy and management at the Yale School of Public Health, said colleges should be keeping isolation dorms open for students who test positive just before Thanksgiving.

“There’s a responsibility not to unleash little ticking time bombs,” said Paltiel, noting that recently exposed students can feel well and still shed large quantities of the virus. “But this has not yet hit the radar screen of many college administrators.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not issued guidance specific to holiday breaks for college students, though it has advised that “travel increases the chance of getting and spreading the virus that causes COVID-19.”

The American College Health Association, which represents college health officers, recently issued public health guidelines recommending that schools encourage students to get tested before their Thanksgiving departure, refrain from traveling if they test positive and quarantine for 14 days at home upon arrival.

But the association stopped short of calling for mandatory testing.

The New York Times has documented more than 252,000 coronavirus cases and at least 80 deaths on college campuses since the pandemic began. Most of the deaths involved college employees in the spring. But at least four students have died this semester after contracting COVID-19.

Some schools — mostly small, rural schools with limited sports programs and Greek life — mandated frequent and widespread testing and contact tracing, sent scofflaws home and managed, often at significant cost, to allow students to keep attending face-toface classes and living in dorms.

Others have opted for less aggressive — and generally less successful — measures, such as testing only volunteers or people with symptoms.

LEE KLAFCZYNSKI/THE NEW YORK TIMES Indiana University will open its weekly surveillance testing to all of the 42,000 students living on or near campus. But testing will be voluntary for most.