COLUMBIA – The University of South Carolina led the way as the first to close its campus and transition to online classes amid the coronavirus outbreak. It is now the only major university in the state to begin its semester with classroom lessons.
Administrators at the state’s largest school say that student health facilities on campus, complete with COVID-19 testing and contact tracking, as well as mask and testing requirements, make the school exceptionally capable of opening while the pandemic continues. devastating the state of Palmetto.
As the other schools have chosen a more conservative approach, USC has been steadfast, relying on its reopening plan, months in progress, as students begin moving out next weekend.
“We feel that we have a plan that is being analyzed by a large team of professionals,” said President Bob Caslen during a meeting at the virtual city hall with students and parents this week. “It was analyzed from all perspectives. Identified areas of risk. Implemented risk mitigation programs. And we are confident that we can mitigate this risk. “
Meanwhile, Clemson University President Jim Clements said his projections show that cases would increase if the state’s second largest college brought students back to campus in August and felt it would be safer to postpone face-to-face classes until mid-May. September. The same applies to College of Charleston, the state’s third largest school.
“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts in planning and preparedness, all indicators of the pandemic indicate that a safe start, face-to-face teaching in late August will be difficult,” College of Charleston President Andrew Hsu told board members. . “The new daily cases of COVID-19 in South Carolina remain very high, the rate of positivity continues to hover above 15 percent, the number of hospital beds available in Lowcountry is low and the delays in testing and lack of staff health are the reality. “
In Charleston County, two-thirds of the 1,927 hospital beds are occupied, according to the latest report from SC’s Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Clemson is more isolated. Half of the 467 beds in nearby Anderson County are occupied, as well as a third of the 136 beds in neighboring Pickens County. Patients are expected to travel 30 miles from campus to Greenville to increase capacity, but cases are growing there, with two-thirds of the county’s 1,486 beds occupied.
DHEC also warns that not all of these beds are suitable for the treatment of adult patients with COVID-19, as the new federal requirements that took effect on July 22 require hospitals to report all beds as a number, rather than broken down by type.
Whenever students return to the College of Charleston campus, an increase in coronavirus cases will be inevitable, said Paul Patrick, Hsu’s chief of staff. Most importantly, the overall COVID-19 figures in Charleston County, as well as across the state, are reduced to a point so that hospital systems are not overburdened when students return.
“Our hope is that if all of these two numbers fall in mid-September, we will be safe to go back,” said Hsu.
USC is joining The Citadel and Lander University to begin some face-to-face classes. The others are starting with online classes and can be converted if COVID-19 cases fall.
According to the Association of Public & Land Grant Universities, 50 percent of schools across the country are offering face-to-face education; 35 percent, which includes USC, are offering a mix of classroom and online education; and 15 percent are putting all classes online.
Hours may change at USC, said Caslen.
“If we reach an unacceptable risk, mainly defined by the excess of our medical capacity, we will disperse to 100 percent online as we did last spring,” he said.
The school said it will closely monitor positive cases, both on and off campus; student behavior; hospital capacity; and is testing wastewater on campus for spikes in the coronavirus, similar to the test being done at Clemson.
USC has already started a gradual increase in students and teachers returning last month, with students living in off-campus homes.
“We learned a lot. We made some adjustments. We identify trends that we can expect and what has worked and what has not. And it really helped us a little bit, “said Caslen.
And although the campus closed in March, Caslen said 11,200 students chose to stay in Columbia, according to data from the student affairs office.
When the entire student body returns later this month, the school will receive its second largest freshman class in history. At the end of July, there were 31,000 students registered for the fall semester, Stacey Bradley, USC’s senior associate vice president for Student Affairs and Academic Support. About 32,000 were on the Columbia campus last year.
“I am not naive in knowing that we can expect spikes when we bring so many students back. And frankly, many students are already back here and have been here all summer in their off-campus student residence, where 80% of them live during the regular school year, “said Caslen.
When asked why USC is making progress, Caslen told the team that the reopening is a balance between the health of students and staff and the university’s financial viability. He said colleges that choose to offer only online classes are seeing a 15% to 20% drop in enrollment across the country.
USC expects to lose more than $ 165 million in revenue from the COVID-19 outbreak. Part of this will be offset by $ 21.4 million in federal aid for coronavirus.
“We will open, we will open the right way and we will open safely,” he said.
Dean Bill Tate said that what is unique about USC is its internal capacity for health care.
“Many, many universities do not have the same capacity as the University of South Carolina or existing professionals to ensure that both prevention and intervention are taking place. This is a very, very special place in American higher education because of that ”. he said.
Deb Beck, executive director of student health services at USC, said the university has 280 individual dormitories available for individual quarantine if the student’s test is positive for COVID-19. Meals and class materials will be brought directly to these students.
The campus also has its own medical school and a new 68,000 square foot student health center, built just three years ago.
“Not everyone has what we have,” said Tate. “If they don’t, they may not be opening; but we have ”.
Beck said that Arnold School of Public Health epidemiologists spent the summer researching the virus and modeling its possible spread.
They considered the problems that might arise and how they would react when they did, either by temporarily closing certain sections of the campus or temporarily switching classes online. She said that specialized teams are ready to be deployed in a particular building or school, should a cluster be identified.
The university has about 15 case managers, to whom she said that each student with a positive test will be assigned, and many more employees to handle isolation monitoring. Epidemiologists’ predictions project how many contact trackers the university might need “and we far exceed that,” said Beck.
Through the electronic medical record, the school is able to predict when outbreaks of various diseases, such as the flu, may occur. Beck said that while part of the spread of the disease in the past has come from living in university residences, it is mainly in off-campus activities, where the university has less control, that contagion happens.
Caslen said he and Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin discussed a local curfew and rules on distance between restaurants.
“We had several significant discussions. The curfew would be a real curfew, as we have had in the past, and not the governor’s ‘last call’ executive order,” said Benjamin.
Benjamin said he still needs to revise Governor Henry McMaster’s latest executive order, which imposes occupancy requirements in restaurants that were previously only suggestions.
In the meantime, 30 faculty members at the University of North Carolina wrote an open letter to The Charlotte Observer asking students to stay home and saying, “Under current conditions, it is not safe for you to come to campus – to live in dormitories and apartments, sitting in classrooms and socializing with your colleagues the way college students usually do. “
Caslen said that while he understands that the USC team also has concerns about returning to face-to-face classes, he promised to support them to protect their health.