Central Florida colleges look to limit coronavirus

Response includes providing vaccines for students, employees

With COVID-19 infections surging across the state, Florida colleges and universities are preparing to limit outbreaks and possibly play a key role in providing vaccines later this spring.

Welcoming back students from winter break poses a familiar challenge for college campuses, which should expect outbreaks to occur and be prepared to manage them, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

But, Benjamin cautioned, “we have a much more robust outbreak in the country this time than we had as schools reopened in the early fall.”

Whether only a few students or hundreds are infected largely depends on the university’s response, he said, adding those that established strong testing and contract tracing programs during the fall are in the best position to slow the virus’s spread. Florida colleges may have a particularly tough challenge because the state’s reopening policies for public places, including restaurants and bars, have been more lenient than most.

However, relief is on the horizon and eventually, college health officials say, campuses could provide the vaccine to students and employees. The University of Central Florida said Friday it expects to receive an initial batch of 1,000 doses that will be made available to healthcare workers, as well as employees and students 65 years or older.

When the vaccine becomes widely available, UCF could administer as many as 20,000 doses in a week, said Dr. Michael Deichen, associate vice president of the university’s student health services.

“We’re just waiting on the vaccine at this point in time,” he said.

Deichen serves on the American College Health Association’s COVID-19 Task Force, which released a set of guidelines last month urging colleges to continue frequent testing and to prepare to administer the vaccine quickly to students and employees when possible, noting that many campuses are ideal sites for distribution.

Though young adults generally are considered low-risk for serious complications from the virus, the college health organization is urging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to recommend vaccinating students before the end of the spring semester because of the risk they’ll bring the virus home when classes end.

The University of Florida has started giving the first of two required vaccine doses to roughly 1,100 faculty members who are 65 and older, sparing them from the logjam seniors across the state have experienced as they try to make appointments or spend hours waiting in line at drop-in locations for immunization.

In the near term, schools are requiring students to submit negative virus test results before resuming in-person classes this month. At UCF, students living on campus must take a rapid test administered by student health services before checking into on-campus housing for the spring semester, which starts Monday. The five-day process began Wednesday.

The university plans to add more in-person classes this semester, though classroom capacity will be limited and a campus-wide mask mandate will continue. The school also is adding more measures intended to detect and limit outbreaks, including testing sewage from five residence halls for the presence of the virus, similar to efforts seen at other colleges, including UF and Rollins College.

“I think this is a critical time to be careful,” Deichen said. “The incidence of COVID-19 in the community is at the highest level to date, and everyone needs to be careful.”

Other schools are testing students upon arrival, as well. UF is requiring campus housing residents to test for the virus when they return and will continue testing specific groups of students every two weeks. At Rollins, where the spring term starts Jan. 19, students must be tested within five to 10 days of returning and are asked to avoid non-essential activities for a week.

Fearing students could bring the virus to their campuses after spending the holidays at home, some universities have opted to postpone in-person classes and activities. At Florida State University, classes started Wednesday as planned, but the school decided last month they should remain online-only until Jan. 19. Others are delaying the start of on-campus activities even longer, including Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, which will hold online-only classes until Feb. 15.

President LaBrent Chrite cited “dangerously high” virus levels in Florida and across much of the country in a Jan. 1 letter to students explaining the decision to cancel in-person classes for the first month of the semester, adding “we have no alternative but to postpone the return to campus.”

“With a dangerous contagion that is yet to peak, I believe that another course of action would be less than fully responsible,” Chrite wrote.