Colleges that require virus scanning technology to tell if it works

Before the University of Idaho welcomed students back to campus last fall, it made a big bet on new virus screening technology.

The university spent $ 90,000 installing temperature scanning stations, which look like metal detectors at airports, in front of its sports and dining facilities in Moscow, Idaho. When the system detects a student walking with an exceptionally high temperature, the student is asked to go out and take the Covid-19 test.

But so far, fever scanners, which detect skin temperature, have detected less than 10 people among the 9,000 students living on or near campus. Even so, university administrators could not say whether the technology had been effective because they did not screen students with a fever to see if they tested for the virus.

The University of Idaho is one of hundreds of colleges and universities that have adopted fever scanners, symptom checkers, wearable heart rate monitors and other new Covid tracking technologies this school year. These tools generally cost less than a more validated health intervention: frequent virus testing by all students. They also help colleges to show their security efforts against a pandemic.

But the struggle in many colleges to keep the virus under control has raised questions about the usefulness of the technologies. An effort by the New York Times has recorded more than 530,000 cases of viruses on campuses since the pandemic began.

One problem is that temperature scanners and symptom checking applications cannot detect the estimated 40% of people with coronavirus who have no symptoms, but are still infectious. Temperature scanners can also be extremely inaccurate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that this symptom-based screening has only “limited effectiveness”.

Schools find it difficult to say whether – or how well – the new devices have worked. Many universities and colleges, including prominent research institutions, are not rigorously studying effectiveness.

“So, why are we bothering?” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security technologist who described these screening systems as “security theater” – that is, tools that make people feel better without actually improving their security. “Why spend the money?”

More than 100 schools are using a free virus symptom checking application, called CampusClear, which can free students to enter campus buildings. Others are asking students to use symptom monitoring devices that can continuously monitor vital signs, such as skin temperature. And some have adapted the ID card reading systems they use to admit students to dorms, libraries and gyms as tools to track possible virus exposures.

Administrators in Idaho and other universities said their schools were using the new technology, along with policies such as social detachment, as part of larger campus efforts to prevent the virus. Some said it was important for their schools to implement screening tools, even if they were only moderately useful. At the very least, they said, using services like daily symptom checking apps can reassure students and remind them to be aware of other measures, such as wearing masks.

Some public health experts said it was understandable that colleges had not methodically assessed the technology’s effectiveness against coronavirus. After all, they said, schools are not used to frequently tracking the entire campus population for new infectious diseases.

Still, some experts said they were concerned about the lack of important information at universities that could help them make more evidence-based decisions about health screening.

“It’s a huge data vacuum,” said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist who is an assistant professor at George Mason University. “The moral of the story is that you can’t just invest in this technology without having a validation process behind it.”

Other medical experts said the increased surveillance of healthy university students seemed unduly intrusive, as symptom checkers have limited utility and the effectiveness of wearable health monitors against Covid-19 is not yet known.

The introduction of screening tools on the campus has been bumpy. Last fall, the University of Missouri began demanding that all students, faculty and staff use CampusClear, a free application that asks users about possible symptoms, such as high temperature or loss of smell. Users who claim to have no symptoms receive a “Good to use!” notification that can release them to enter campus buildings.

The school initially did not enforce the use of CampusClear at building entrances, however, and some students used the app rarely, according to a report in The Missourian, the campus newspaper. In October, the university started demanding that people show the application password to enter certain buildings, such as the student center and library. The university promoted the app as a tool to help educate students.

But how effective it has been in preventing coronavirus outbreaks on campus is unknown. A University of Missouri spokesman said the school was unable to provide CampusClear usage data – including the number of students who reported possible symptoms through the app and then tested positive for the virus – requested by a Times reporter.

Jason Fife, director of marketing for Ivy.ai, the start-up behind CampusClear, said that nearly 425,000 people at about 120 colleges and universities used the app last semester, generating about 9.8 million user reports . Many schools, he noted, use the app’s data not to track individual cases of viruses, but to look for symptom trends on their campuses.

Ivy.ai, however, fails to assess the application’s effectiveness as a virus screening tool, he said. For privacy reasons, the company does not screen individual users who report symptoms and later show positive results for the infection.

At some universities, administrators recognized that the technology they adopted this school year did not go the way they expected.

Bridgewater State University in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, introduced two tools last semester that recorded students’ whereabouts if they developed virus infections and administrators needed to track their contacts. A system recorded the location of students whenever they passed their ID cards to enter campus buildings. The other asked students to scan the QR codes printed at certain locations on campus.

At the end of the semester, however, only about a third of the 1,200 students on campus were scanning barcodes. Ethan Child, a veteran of Bridgewater, said he scanned the QR codes, but also ignored them when passing in the rain.

“I think it is reasonable to ask students to do this – whether they are really going to do this or not, is something else,” he said. “People can just ignore it.”

Administrators found that the key to preventing coronavirus outbreaks was not technology, but simply frequent testing – once a week for students on campus – along with contact tracking, said Chris Frazer, the wellness center’s executive director. being at the university.

“I’m glad we didn’t spend an exorbitant amount of money” on technology tools, said Frazer. “We found that we need tests and more tests.”

Location tracking tools have proven to be more useful for “peace of mind,” he added, and to confirm the findings of contact trackers, who often learned much more about the activities of infected students by calling them than by examining their records. location.

Other schools that found that location tracking was not a useful pandemic security tool decided not to deploy it.

At Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, administrators said they planned to record students’ locations when they used campus Wi-Fi for possible later use in contact tracking. But the school never introduced the system, said Chris Barlow, the school’s director of health services, in part because administrators realized that many students contracted the virus off campus, in situations where public health measures, such as use masks were not followed.

At the University of Idaho and other schools, administrators described devices such as fever scanners as additions to greater campus security efforts, involving student testing and measures such as social detachment.

Last fall, for example, the University of Idaho tested its students for the virus at the beginning and middle of the semester, with some random tests as well. The school also used a wastewater testing program to identify an impending virus outbreak in fraternity and fellowship houses, proactively quarantining more than a dozen chapters before cases could spread widely across the community.

“We left the front early,” said C. Scott Green, president of the University of Idaho. “We were able to isolate those who were sick and get back in control.”

Even so, there were hiccups. The university required that food service employees who worked in the cafeteria undergo temperature checks using handheld readers. But several viruses developed infections anyway, and the university was forced to temporarily close the cafeteria over a weekend for thorough cleaning.

As for stand-alone temperature scanning stations, Green himself experienced its limitations. He said that one by mistake prevented him from entering a sports building shortly after he got out of a hot car.