Quarantines and short shifts to web instruction are last-ditch efforts before schools change course for the whole term

Providence College put itself on lockdown last month, barring students who live on campus from traveling into town and telling those who live off campus to shelter in place, using food delivery services. Classes moved online. Students could socialize only with their roommates.The goal: save the semester.If we can get this outbreak under control, we will have the opportunitytogetherto write a great comeback story, Dean of Students Steven Sears wrote to students over the weekend, soon after the restrictions were renewed for another week. The school, with about 4,800 students, has recorded more than 200 cases so far, including more than 100 in a three-day span.
Providence is among colleges taking drastic steps to try to slow the spread of Covid-19, essentially pressing pause to salvage the rest of their fall term for face-to-face instruction and campus activities. The University of Arizona urged students to shelter in place for two weeks, while the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Colorado Boulder quarantined thousands of students and moved classes online for weeks, too.
This may be the last opportunity for our campus to bend the curve of infection and return to in-person instruction before we are forced to move to remote operations for the remainder of the semester, Colorado Chancellor Philip DiStefano warned in a note to the school last week. Lets prove we can do this.
Colleges and universities around the country tried a range of approaches to reopening this fall, with some opting for online instruction from the start, others bringing just a small share of students to campus, and still others inviting back their entire populations. Many adjusted their academic calendars, eliminating long weekends in the hopes of sprinting through to Thanksgiving and then sending students home to finish the final few classes and their exams.
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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Temple University and North Carolina State University have dramatically shifted away from the original plans they laid out for the fall term. All three moved to fully online instruction, with students dispersing to off-campus housing or their hometowns. Public-health officials caution against sending students home unless they have tested negative, because they could carry the coronavirus across geographies and to more vulnerable populations.
Many schools say their experiences this fall are shaping their spring plans, including beefing up testing requirements and thinning out dorm populations.
A number of schools have pointed to the University of Notre Dame as a model for how to tighten restrictions, briefly, and then loosen them again successfully.
A week after classes began there, 19% of the days 418 Covid-19 tests came back positive. Notre Dame shifted to online instruction for two weeks, barred visitors from dorms and halved the cap on gatherings, to 10 people. The school also stepped up its surveillance testing, to catch hot spots faster. By the end of that two-week period, just a few tests were coming back positive each day.
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Similar measures seem to be working at Wisconsin. That school placed two large dorms housing 2,200 students under quarantine because of outbreaks, and classes went online for two weeks beginning in mid-September.
Administrators had watched with growing consternation as case counts ticked up from 38, to 146 a couple of days later, to 290 by Sept. 9. More than 12% of tests were coming back positive.
With movement restricted, the number of new cases fell quickly back into double digits, and continues to trend downward. On Sept. 27, there were 11 positive cases, or 2.4% of all tests.
Our collective efforts have worked, Chancellor Rebecca Blank said last week as she lifted the quarantines and announced a phased return to in-person classes. Some operations at dining halls, libraries and fitness centers would also resume.
Still, said Laurent Heller, vice chancellor for finance and administration, That doesnt mean its license to go back to the way things were before.
The school added more contact tracers and is trying to spread students out across dorms, continuing its limits on visitors and cracking down on students who break the rules. It has also increased its testing capacity, with weekly tests of students living on campus and faster turnaround times for results.
Arizona had already started the term with most classes online, but on Sept. 14 stepped up its restrictions further. The school requestedbut didnt outright demandthat students shelter in place, after the positivity rate for Covid-19 tests ticked up over 8%.
Those who had in-person classes could still attend, and they could go to the grocery store or pharmacy and take care of other essentials.
It was really a way of saying, Just dont go out and party in large groups, said President Robert Robbins, a cardiac surgeon. If they didnt comply and case numbers continued to climb, the county health department could put residences under quarantine, essentially locking students down completely.
Those werent even veiled threats, Dr. Robbins said. Weve developed all these tests, weve reconfigured the campus, weve spent all this money. All of that was going to be lost because of the out-of-control number of cases we had.
The school has already handed down interim suspensions and expulsions to 27 students who were doing what Dr. Robbins called varsity-level partying.
Since students were urged to hunker down, daily case numbers have fallen, and just 1.4% of tests came back positive on Monday. The shelter-in-place recommendation was lifted effective Wednesday morning. Dr. Robbins said he would like to start allowing a few thousand more students to attend face-to-face classes as soon as early October.
CU Boulder, in coordination with county health officials, issued a stay-home order on Sept. 15 that urged all students there to self-quarantine for two weeks, with most classes moving online.
New cases fell to 254 last week from 457 the prior week, but those numbers were still too high.
The school moved all undergraduate, graduate and law classes online for at least two weeks beginning last Wednesday.
It got another assist from Boulder County Public Health, which last week prohibited gatherings of any size among 18-22 year-olds and filed stay-home orders for 36 properties where there had already been unlawful gatherings. Their orderwhich overrides campus guidanceis in effect until Oct. 8.
On Monday, the school recorded 32 more positive student cases, still far above the numbers from when students first arrived to campus.
Write to Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com
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