COVID-19 at Ohio State: A year of tests, quarantines and social distancing

Max Garrison
Thu, 22 Apr 2021 00:52:12 +0000
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COVID-19 has defined Ohio State's academic year like nothing else. Read the year's roundup of COVID-19 at Ohio State here.

Jesse Owens North Recreation Center was repurposed this academic year to serve as a COVID-19 testing center for students. Credit: Mackenzie Shanklin | Photo Editor

Since Ohio State reopened campus in August 2020, it implemented numerous COVID-19 health and safety guidelines to keep students on campus, including indoor and outdoor mask requirements, decreased classroom capacity and a testing program not comparable to many others.

Students returned to campus in the fall to some of the university’s tightest procedures, and while those procedures prevented many COVID-19 cases in those first weeks, several thousand students gathering from across Ohio and the world still caused a positivity rate greater than 6 percent among students by the end of August.?

Ohio State implemented extensive surveillance COVID-19 testing and contact tracing programs among the student populations in order to monitor as many students as possible — not just symptomatic ones.

By the beginning of October, the student population’s COVID-19 positivity rate was under 1 percent.

Initially, on-campus students were required to test once weekly and off-campus students were tested randomly. Eventually, all students were required to test at least once per week.

The return of Ohio State football, coupled with Halloween and travel for fall and winter holidays, brought large parties to the campus area — and another rise in COVID-19 cases. As the positivity rate topped3 percent again, the university implemented a test-out procedure — in which students took multiple COVID-19 tests before leaving the campus area for winter break before Thanksgiving.

Returning to campus reversed the test-out process. On-campus student residents mailed in a COVID-19 test and were supposed to sequester for 10 days before returning for an immediate second test. Off-campus students were to take multiple tests and sequester in their residences as well. Spring semester began on campus after two weeks of virtual learning, all students were required to test for COVID-19 at least once weekly.

At the beginning of March, cases among on-campus residents rose slightly as the positivity rate doubled to over 1 percent after the first of two two-day instructional breaks that were created to replace a week-long spring break.?

The university then increased testing requirements for on-campus students to twice weekly for two weeks. Following the second instructional break at the beginning of April, Ohio State required twice-weekly testing for all students.?

By the end of this semester, Ohio State will have administered almost 700,000 student COVID-19 tests for more than 8,000 positive cases, ordered about 19,000 quarantine and isolation periods and operated on campus for 26 weeks of in-person classes.?