[Uosenate] Fwd: Monitoring the re-opening

Thu Aug 20 14:09:42 PDT 2020

Apologies for sending Andre’s responses in what appears to be disappearing ink. I promise you that is not some hidden message about administrative opacity, but rather my bias toward dark-themed backgrounds. Andre’s responses are now in RED below.

- Ell

Elliot Berkman
Senate President
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology & Center for Translational Neuroscience
he/him/his
On Aug 20, 2020, 2:00 PM -0700, Senate President <senatepres at uoregon.edu>, wrote:
Hi all,

I’ve received a few questions about UO’s reopening that I passed along to Andre Le Duc. I’m passing along the queries and his answers below. Some interesting information here about how we’re relating to the County and the community surrounding UO. The questions are in blue and Andre’s replies are in white.

I haven't heard admin acknowledge that even at a low .80% positivity rate seen in other public universities selected by the admin, the UO population testing will add about 40 cases to Lane County's numbers each week (since they plan to run about 5,000 tests per week). Those 40-ish cases will increase our case/100k population metric by more than 10 each week. This is in addition to all of the non-UO cases that contribute to this metric (last week there were 67 TOTAL cases in Lane County). The Governor has set a return-to-school metric for K-12 at 10 or less cases/100K each week. If UO brings students back to campus, it practically ensures that Lane County will never meet the Gov's metrics for our kids to return to school. This affects faculty, staff, students, and the community. What is UO's responsibility in regards to the increased case metrics that they will create? What is UO admin planning to do to offset the increased cases they will create in the community? What allowances for faculty, staff, and students with kids will UO make in regards to decreased workloads because UO's decision to have students on campus will be the main reason people have less time to work, since they must care for their children who can't attend school in person?

Thank you for sharing this email. I want to assure everyone that we have been working very closely with Lane County Public Health (LCPH) to develop our testing strategies. The county is aware of issues that increased testing could have on county case numbers. The testing strategies we are developing need to account for LCPH capacity limitations on things like contact tracing and case management. If we test 4000 students over two weeks and assume a positivity rate of 1-3%, we understand that there will be 40 - 120 positives.  Therefore our public health systems need to be ready to process the caseload.

There is also some confusion on how many tests the UO can run at this time.  The UO does not have the capacity to run 5000 tests per week.  That is a goal, but we are not there at this point.  Also, our testing capacity is part of the overall community testing capacity. Meaning, the public health authorities are part of any conversation on how our testing capacity will be utilized.

As you know, the UO is not an island, nor are we the community public health authority. We have been working closely with LCPH on every aspect of the test, track, and treat strategies. In fact, it was the UO investments in testing equipment early on that assisted Lane County in moving out of phase 1. Also, the Student Corona Corp we developed to help with contact tracing is part of the county-wide system.  The bottom line is the UO is working closely with LCPH and others on these complex problems.

One example of our coordination is the calls that LCPH hosts weekly, with both clinicians and the incident commanders from the area (e.g., cities, county, health care systems, UO, etc.) to ensure we are all coordinating our response efforts. From the beginning of the pandemic, it has always been about coordination and communication with our public health authorities and local healthcare providers.

LCPH leadership also understands that for many of our students, Eugene is home for them during their time at the UO.  Even if we were to move to entirely remote, we expect a large percentage of students will still be in Eugene.  We saw this with the spring term. Therefore, we all must work together to keep our entire community, including UO students, faculty, and staff, safe by following the basic prevention practices.  Testing will not prevent the spread, but it does help us understand the prevalence, and as we increase the testing capacity, it will assist us in containment efforts.

I used the case and positivity numbers from Andre along with an example from week 1 at UNC (who just announced they are going remote after their failed in person experiment). I have a great deal of respect for Andre and the incident management team -- no doubt they are going above and beyond to make the safest plan possible. I appreciate their efforts that have helped Lane County have the low numbers they do right now. That doesn't change the fact that even the best plan will result in increased cases. The issue of the school metrics from the Governor is fairly recent and I'm curious how this new K-12 metric requirement affects UO's planning?

Question: What is UO's responsibility to the county COVID case and positivitiy metrics if they allow campus to open in person? These metrics are used to determine if all of Lane County K-12 schools can ever be in person. Many UO faculty, staff, and even students have children in K-12 school. By their own admission, if UO opens in person they will increase Lane County's COVID metrics by about 20-60 cases per week (that is assuming a low positivity rate of 1-3%). Last week Lane County had 67 total cases and still did not meet the grade 4-12 school metric requirements set by the Governor. Currently, Lane County does meet the metrics for K-3 in person school. Assuming this trend continued and the state metrics continue to go in a positive direction, this means K-3 children in Lane County could be in person (if the school chose), which affects every county school district and private school even beyond 4J's plans and includes many rural areas as Lane County is large. However, if UO opens in person and adds 20-60 cases per week (very best case scenario), then even K-3 school could likely not be in person. UO would be willingly increasing the COVID metrics to a point that practically guarantees K-12 school can't open in person throughout all of Lane County for as long as campus was open.What is UO's responsibility to the community and thousands of children who will be affected by this decision? What workload reductions will UO allow for faculty/staff who have to manage their children's education at home because of UO's decision to open campus in person?

It is also unlikely that a low 1-3% positivity rate would be sustained among the UO student population. As we all are witnessing, UNC opened this past week with an initial 2.8% positivity rate among student tests and then just six days later that rose to 13.6% positivity with at least four known separate outbreak clusters. UNC has since announced a remote fall term and is asking students to leave campus after just one week of an in person campus.

Thank you for the follow-up question. As you can imagine, there are many moving elements we are working on to navigate this situation. As I stated in my first response, we are working very closely with Lane County Public Health (LCPH) and the local hospital incident commanders on all the plans we are developing for the UO. The UO is not working independently on these efforts. The UO is part of the overall community/county response to COVID-19. One of the primary goals in everything we are doing is to make sure we do not exceed the local public health system capacities as we increase testing in the community. Regarding the increase in positive test results, we (UO and LCPH) expect an increase in positive results as we increase testing in the community, regardless of whether the campus is remote or in-person. Again, we need to remember for a large number of our students Eugene is home for them while they are at the UO. Students will still come to Eugene as they've made their payments for apartments in the area.

We were not part of the state team at Oregon Health Authority that set the current K-12 thresholds for reopening. However, like many of the thresholds established to try to control the disease spread, they generally look at what the community testing/contact tracing capacities are at the time they are set. Therefore, as the state increases those capacities (testing/contact tracing), we assume the threshold will be adjusted at the statewide level. There are three types of testing diagnostic, screening, and surveillance. What we have planned for our resident hall move-in is screening. These tests are controlled, meaning when we ID positive cases, the individual is put into isolation. Therefore, the risk to the community is low. We are currently talking to LCPH about ways to ID those tests in a way that the results would not negatively impact the K-12 metrics.

We also fully understand the K-12 impacts on our faculty and staff, and HR has been and will continue to work on several ways to be flexible.

While we do not have all the answers, I can assure you the topics that the individual has raised below are things we are working on with the local public health authorities daily to find a path forward for our community. We understand the K-12 concerns and statewide metrics for their reopening. We don't have much more to share at this point, but I am happy to share the concerns below with our LCPH partners.

- Ell

Elliot Berkman
Senate President
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology & Center for Translational Neuroscience
he/him/his
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Senate President Elliot Berkman <senatepres at uoregon.edu>
Date: Aug 14, 2020, 9:49 PM -0700
To: uosenate at lists.uoregon.edu
Subject: Monitoring the re-opening
Hello Senators,

As you might imagine, VP Gildea and I have been closely monitoring UO’s reopening plans with the safety of our students, faculty, and staff foremost in our minds, and finding ways to maintain the safety of the campus community while also remaining committed to our mission to educate our students, generate knowledge through research and scholarship, and serve the state of Oregon. We’re in regular communication with the senior leadership, who have been receptive to our input and helpful in answering the many questions we’ve been asking. If you or your constituent have questions or concerns about our re-opening plans, please let us know so we can bring them to the administrative leadership.

One recent meeting we had was with Roger Thompson, Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Services. We  were seeking information about freshman enrollment and how UO is communicating to committed and prospective first year students. Roger’s team wanted to share with the senate some samples of the messages that are going out to students and families so far that highlight UO’s commitment to safety. Below is only a selection of some of what has being going out to students:
 • Housing video: https://youtu.be/LzH5KUtLN8c<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/LzH5KUtLN8c__;!!C5qS4YX3!SuPWaazW_Jt6BoiIQDSOG877WcH8thpk8Bj_OUPHCE9yZQt7tpZNCld8BXpAn3zVOa8$>
 • Podcast episodes: https://flocktalk.uoregon.edu/
 • Episode 3: What we Know Now about Fall Instruction (Provost Phillips)
 • Episode 8, COVID Research Contact Tracing and Testing (Cass Mosley)
 • Episode 10, Philosophy of Policing a college campus (Chief Carmichael)
 • Episode 16, Preparing for Fall (Roger)
 • Presidents email last week: https://president.uoregon.edu/preparing-fall-term
 • Enrollment Town Hall Event: https://youtu.be/jpZpRltJ3oI<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://youtu.be/jpZpRltJ3oI__;!!C5qS4YX3!SuPWaazW_Jt6BoiIQDSOG877WcH8thpk8Bj_OUPHCE9yZQt7tpZNCld8BXpAgLP_7No$>
Enrollment Management has surveyed several hundred committed incoming students about their preferences for the fall term. The results of that survey will be available shortly, and we will share the results with you when they are available.

Also, given the lack of precedent for re-opening under these conditions, Enrollment Management has been closely monitoring a number of other schools that re-opened this week or will be re-opening in the next two weeks. I’m pasting below a note from Roger with some of the data gathered by his team.

I appreciate all the thoughtful questions and comments that I’ve been receiving from Senators, and I know that the President and Provost do as well. Keep ‘em coming! Have a nice weekend,

- Ell

Elliot Berkman
Senate President
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology & Center for Translational Neuroscience
he/him/his

Note from Roger Thompson, Aug 14:

Colleagues,

Good afternoon.

As you may know, we have a team tracking some of the “Power-Five” semester schools that opened on August 10, 17 and we will soon start tracking some of the semester schools starting courses on August 24.  While our team continues to analyze re-entry plans across the country, the team did share some interesting data with me.

Private institutions:

The University of Miami, which begins classes on Monday, August 17 has early reports on the results of the re-entry testing program that began this week.  The U of Miami reported a positive test rate to date is <0.5%. That includes results for 6,845 students, about 40% of total enrollment. The testing requirement applies only to students choosing to return to campus for in-person classes, so it is difficult to know how many total tests to expect as our team does not know how many students they expect for on campus instruction.
(story here: https://messages.miami.edu/messages/2020/08/08-14-20-students-move-in-and-classes-begin-monday.html<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://messages.miami.edu/messages/2020/08/08-14-20-students-move-in-and-classes-begin-monday.html__;!!C5qS4YX3!SuPWaazW_Jt6BoiIQDSOG877WcH8thpk8Bj_OUPHCE9yZQt7tpZNCld8BXpAxbjuklc$> )

This week Duke University began the move-in process for the start of fall semester instruction.    Duke has reported a positive test rate of 0.13% positive or 4 positive tests out of a total tested of 3,116. (see story here: https://today.duke.edu/2020/08/update-covid-19-testing-duke-students<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://today.duke.edu/2020/08/update-covid-19-testing-duke-students__;!!C5qS4YX3!SuPWaazW_Jt6BoiIQDSOG877WcH8thpk8Bj_OUPHCE9yZQt7tpZNCld8BXpAmMIKFfk$> )

Earlier I had shared the publicity campaign for the University of Notre Dame, which I thought was quite good.  It featured the Provost demonstrating how to utilize the “drive-through” testing option.  In any event, Notre Dame started well, with a re-entry to campus test rate of 0.28% with 33 positive tests from a base of 11,836 students.  However, this week Notre Dame has experienced an increase with 29 confirmed positive cases out of 348 tests for a positive rate of 8.3%.  (see ND dashboard here: https://here.nd.edu/our-approach/dashboard/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://here.nd.edu/our-approach/dashboard/__;!!C5qS4YX3!SuPWaazW_Jt6BoiIQDSOG877WcH8thpk8Bj_OUPHCE9yZQt7tpZNCld8BXpA0TReIcE$> )

Public Institutions:

Iowa State University started re-entry on August 3 in preparation for the first day of instruction on Monday, August 17.   As Andre reported in an earlier meeting, the move-in testing involved 3,037, with 66 positive cases for a 2.2% positive testing rate.  Additional information about testing results was not readily identifiable.
(see ISU COVID response site here: https://web.iastate.edu/safety/updates/covid19/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://web.iastate.edu/safety/updates/covid19/__;!!C5qS4YX3!SuPWaazW_Jt6BoiIQDSOG877WcH8thpk8Bj_OUPHCE9yZQt7tpZNCld8BXpApb8SBhg$> )

The University of Kentucky began re-entry to campus with residence hall move-in on August 8 in preparation for the first day of instruction, August 17.  Currently U of Kentucky has conducted 12,681 tests, with 98 positive results for a positivity rate of 0.8%.  This data includes tests through August 11 as the university states there will be a 72 hour delay in reporting of test results.
(see UK dashboard here: https://www.uky.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-testing-results<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.uky.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-testing-results__;!!C5qS4YX3!SuPWaazW_Jt6BoiIQDSOG877WcH8thpk8Bj_OUPHCE9yZQt7tpZNCld8BXpAwPYWyy4$> )

Lastly a note on two other institutions we are monitoring.  The University of Virginia recently announced they were moving back the re-entry plan including move-in and the beginning of in person instruction.  The university made this decision in early August and the news-brief can be found here:
(https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-delays-person-instruction-move-undergraduates-two-weeks?utm_source=VirginiaFeatured&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=news<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-delays-person-instruction-move-undergraduates-two-weeks?utm_source=VirginiaFeatured&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=news__;!!C5qS4YX3!SuPWaazW_Jt6BoiIQDSOG877WcH8thpk8Bj_OUPHCE9yZQt7tpZNCld8BXpA5t8KjCs$> )

The other public institution worth noting at this time is North Carolina State University.  This institution has no re-entry testing program (which would not be recommended) but instead is testing students who appear at Student Health Services as well as surveillance testing programs.  This is a very different approach than our plan.  This week NC State tested 554 students and found 4 positives for a positive testing rate of 0.87%.  Again, I want to emphasize this is not an approach we should utilize, but instead an interesting manner to approach testing and worth monitoring.

Lastly, as I stated earlier in the message our team is monitoring activity at 20 semester schools starting instruction on August 10 or August 17.  The aforementioned schools are simply a small sample of the total institutions we are monitoring.  Our team is tracking institutional messages, central institutional COVID websites, student newspaper coverage, local newspaper coverage, testing policies, strategic changes, and social media activity.  We will soon identify the additional August 24 semester schools we will add to our daily monitoring.

I want to commend our talented team for their efforts and I hope you find this information as interesting and helpful as I do.

Have a terrific weekend!

Roger
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