| When the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign reopened this fall, it looked like the school had done everything right. It was testing students, faculty and staff for Covid-19 twice a week, a volume that accounted for nearly 20% of the state of Illinois's total virus screenings last week. It developed an app that tracked test results, with a negative clearing students to enter buildings and even some local bars. It also required masks and put large gatherings off-limits. Then, all of a sudden, things weren't going exactly how the school had planned. While more cases had been expected as students came back, new positive tests continued to pile up even after classes began. Last week, the school began cracking down, ratcheting up its public-health measures and asking undergrads to only leave their homes for essential activities.  A COVID-19 saliva sample is collected as testing is conducted at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus. Photographer: Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images What changed? The school said it wasn't just maskless partying, some amount of which it had anticipated, but that some students didn't isolate when they got positive test results back. Indeed, some went out to parties, or even threw parties themselves. Lets be clear: If you test positive for Covid-19, you need to isolate. Obviously. If we've learned nothing else over the last half year, it's how highly infectious this virus is. But what happened at UIUC's Central Illinois campus also shows how reopening during a pandemic is hardly straightforward, even when a plethora of precautions have been taken. In no small part, that's because institutions are doing something totally new and foreign, even as the science is still emerging and human behavior remains hard to predict.--Emma Court | 
Post a Comment