Reopening Universities without Testing During COVID-19: Evaluating a Possible Alternative Strategy in Low Risk Countries
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Abstract
The safety of students worldwide remains a key issue during COVID-19. The reopening of universities in high risk countries during Fall 2020 resulted in numerous outbreaks. While regular screening and testing on campus can prevent the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, they are extremely challenging to implement due to various reasons such as cost and logistics. However, for low risk countries with minimal to no community spread, our study suggests that universities can fully reopen without testing, if students self-quarantine for 14 days on arrival and adopt proper nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). This alternative strategy might save institutions millions of dollars. We adopt agent-based simulation to model virus transmission on campus and test the effectiveness of several NPIs when school reopens. Assuming one initially infected student, results indicate that transmission between roommates causes the most infections with visitors, ground floors, and elevators, being the next main contributors. Limiting density and/or population are not impactful at flattening the curve. However, adopting masks, minimizing movement, and increasing the frequency of cleaning can effectively minimize infection and prevent outbreak, allowing for classes and activities to resume as normal.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.02.21250607: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:As with any model, there are certain limitations in our work. Students are programmed to be 100% compliant to protocol; however, this is highly unlikely in real life. They might refuse or forget to wear masks and attend unsanctioned gatherings with friends8. These actions will all make them more vulnerable to infection and lead to …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.02.21250607: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:As with any model, there are certain limitations in our work. Students are programmed to be 100% compliant to protocol; however, this is highly unlikely in real life. They might refuse or forget to wear masks and attend unsanctioned gatherings with friends8. These actions will all make them more vulnerable to infection and lead to possible outbreak. In addition, we only modeled residential students and assumed no infection from campus staff, faculty, or outside sources. When 14 days of self-quarantine ends, students are free to go outside. Even though community infection in the city is almost non-existent, it would be interesting to model how the virus propagates through classrooms, athletic events, and other activities when one student is infected from outside or if a certain staff or faculty is infected. Lastly, we did not account for asymptomatic carriers, whose prevalence and infectiousness remain unclear. Based on findings from a number of literatures, the U.S. CDC estimates that 10%-70% of patients could be asymptomatic, and their infectiousness can be anywhere between 25%-100% relative to symptomatic patients42. When more epidemiological data are available, future studies could test different prevalence and infectiousness values of asymptomatic patients and examine how they impact the viral transmission in residential students and/or other community settings.
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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