Impact of university re-opening on total community COVID-19 burden
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Abstract
University students have higher average number of contacts than the general population. Students returning to university campuses may exacerbate COVID-19 dynamics in the surrounding community.
Methods
We developed a dynamic transmission model of COVID-19 in a mid-sized city currently experiencing a low infection rate. We evaluated the impact of 20,000 university students arriving on September 1 in terms of cumulative COVID-19 infections, time to peak infections, and the timing and peak level of critical care occupancy. We also considered how these impacts might be mitigated through screening interventions targeted to students.
Results
If arriving students reduce their contacts by 40% compared to pre-COVID levels, the total number of infections in the community increases by 115% (from 3,515 to 7,551), with 70% of the incremental infections occurring in the general population, and an incremental 19 COVID-19 deaths. Screening students every 5 days reduces the number of infections attributable to the student population by 42% and the total COVID-19 deaths by 8. One-time mass screening of students prevents fewer infections than 5-day screening, but is more efficient, requiring 196 tests needed to avert one infection instead of 237.
Interpretation
University students are highly inter-connected with the surrounding off-campus community. Screening targeted at this population provides significant public health benefits to the community through averted infections, critical care admissions, and COVID-19 deaths.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.18.20197467: (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:An important limitation of our analysis is that we assume students with a COVID-19 diagnosis will be willing and able to self-isolate effectively. However, it may be challenging for students to isolate from roommates or refrain from using shared facilities, like bathrooms and kitchens, without dedicated university-organized isolation …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.18.20197467: (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:An important limitation of our analysis is that we assume students with a COVID-19 diagnosis will be willing and able to self-isolate effectively. However, it may be challenging for students to isolate from roommates or refrain from using shared facilities, like bathrooms and kitchens, without dedicated university-organized isolation facilities.56,57 Furthermore, adherence to isolation guidance may be low, especially if the majority of infections in university students are asymptomatic or mild. During the H1N1 pandemic, a survey of symptomatic university students found that only 41% of students followed recommendations to stay home until well.16 In the base case, we also assume that students are equally responsive as the general population to COVID-19 outcomes in the community reducing their contacts in response to high numbers of critical care hospitalizations and deaths. In reality, university students may be less aware of the impacts of COVID-19 on hospital resources and less concerned about COVID-19 generally given their lower risk of adverse outcomes. The extent and speed with university students respond to hospitalizations and deaths in the local community will impact the number of infections experienced by the community and the benefits of routine testing in the student population. Compared to other modeling studies of COVID-19 on university campuses, the total number of infections and the number of infections averted by testing we estimate over the semester are modest...
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.
- Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.
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