Duke is examining daily COVID-19 test results to decide whether to lift the stay-in-place order for undergraduates on Sunday, with enough space in on-campus quarantine and isolation housing to weather the current surge in cases, Duke’s chief spokesman told The Chronicle on Wednesday,
The University is doing 3,000 to 4,000 COVID-19 tests a day, and its modeling team is analyzing the results to see whether the spike of cases is flattening out, said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations. The level of virus spread at Duke is the main metric administration will use to decide when to lift the temporary restrictions on campus life.
“There’s no bright line above which we would say everything’s fine and below which we would say everything’s not fine,” Schoenfeld said. “We’re going to be looking at trends and then ultimately make some judgement calls.”
Administrators have said they will give an update Thursday on the stay-in-place order. The order, which includes a move to online classes and significant limits on campus activities, is currently scheduled to end 9 a.m. Sunday.
The Thursday update may not include a final decision on what will happen beyond the weekend, Schoenfeld noted.
About 125 students were in Duke’s quarantine and isolation housing for on-campus students as of Wednesday morning, Schoenfeld wrote in an email. More than 200 students tested positive last week and hundreds more were placed in precautionary quarantine amid a surge in campus cases that administrators have attributed to fraternity rush, but Schoenfeld wrote that about three-quarters of the students currently in quarantine and isolation are off campus.
Contact tracers and Duke’s isolation care team are in contact with both on- and off-campus students, Schoenfeld said.
The University can ramp up to more than 300 quarantine and isolation beds, spread between dorms and hotels.
“We hope we don’t get to that point. We don’t expect to get to that point. But we do have adequate capacity, more than adequate capacity to handle something of this magnitude for the on-campus population,” Schoenfeld said Wednesday.
Duke had a peak of 80 to 90 students in quarantine and isolation housing during the nationwide winter virus surge, but the housing was nearly empty by mid-February.
Schoenfeld noted that Duke’s stay-in-place order is not unusual during the pandemic. Several other universities, including the University of Notre Dame, have temporarily curtailed campus activities to combat COVID-19 outbreaks.
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Matthew Griffin was editor-in-chief of The Chronicle's 116th volume.