With new Covid outbreaks leading more states to impose early closings, and sharply reduced capacity for bars, restaurants and sporting areas, there are some areas of the country where the emphasis has been on preventing outbreaks. If their strategies were adopted nationwide, experts say, bars, restaurants and sporting arenas could resume near-normal operations.
One of those places is Duke University. Rather than waiting for sick students to contact doctors or appear at nursing homes, it adopted an aggressive program of testing all students to prevent transmission of the virus.
Residential undergraduates are tested twice weekly, off-campus undergraduates one to two times per week, and graduate students approximately once weekly. In addition, in response to newly identified positive test results, testing focused in locations or within cohorts where data suggested an increased risk for transmission, according to an article in Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report.
During Aug. 2–Oct. 11, 68,913 specimens from 10,265 graduate and undergraduate students were tested. Eighty-four specimens were positive for SARS-CoV-2, and 51% were among persons with no symptoms. Testing as a result of contact tracing identified 27.4% of infections. “A combination of risk-reduction strategies and frequent surveillance testing likely contributed to a prolonged period of low transmission on campus,” the MWWR article reports.
Comment: Here is yet more evidence that the way to get bars and restaurants, sporting venues and churches back open is by mass testing of people who show no symptoms, isolating those who test positive and contact tracing. What isn’t clear is why this hasn’t happened.