There are more cases of COVID-19 on college campuses. The University of Georgia reported more positive cases in the first week of spring semester than any other week so far. The last 7 days saw 1,196 confirmed cases at the college. The positive case count at Penn State hit a 12-month high.
College campuses are experiencing a spike in cases due to the fact that most schools are beginning their spring semester in person. According to the College Crisis Initiative, only 14 percent of colleges are online. About 40% of colleges started online last year.
A senior at the University of Oregon says she feels the stress on campus.
In the first week of January, the university had 960 COVID-19 cases despite having a student body that is more than 98% vaccine free. He was one of them.
She thinks people don't feel safe. "You see double masking and you see those N95s that I've never seen people wear before."
When NPR spoke with her, she was out of isolation, and she was wearing a blue surgical mask as she sat in the law school building. For the most part, things seem to be the same. She's not the only one.
Even though the data showed that there was going to be a surge, the faculty, staff and students were shocked that we decided not to be online.
Pressure is put on campus resources by rising case counts.
Colleges have worked non-stop to adapt to the Pandemic and return to in-person classes safely. By the fall of 2021, more than 1,100 campuses required vaccines and many more instituted indoor masking policies; the collective sense among schools was they'd cracked the code of living with COVID-19.
Colleges are some of the most vaccine free places in the country. A study by the COVID States Project shows that college students received one dose of the vaccine more often than the general population.
I think people don't feel safe because of the stress on campus.
A student at the University of Oregon.
The omicron variant has taken campuses by storm.
Gerri Taylor is co-leader of the COVID Task Force for the American College Health Association. I think the numbers we're hearing about are under reported.
The capacity of colleges to handle rapidly increasing case numbers is the biggest worry.
"They need resources in terms of housing, staffing to track them," says Taylor. To have a sense of how many kids on campus are sick, they need staff to test them.
Taylor works with health directors on campus to coordinate their response to COVID. One campus director recently told her that this is the most difficult situation they have ever been in.
Emergency measures are being put in place to deal with the surge in cases. Students who test positive are being housed in hotels. If a student tests positive, they are offered a $400 gift card to the campus store.
Students are waiting to see case counts go up.
There is a lot of uncertainty about how this semester will go. Sophia Kriz is a senior at the college. The school requires all students to get a booster shot by the end of the month. It moved most of the social activities online and implemented weekly testing.
Kriz is worried that the high number of positive cases on campus could shut it down.
She says that it feels like we're in a state of limbo because we're all on campus.
Kriz is in the middle of a rush to find a new organization. The first round of recruitment events will be virtual, but beyond that, it's all up in the air. They're planning for two alternate universes, one where their social life stays virtual and the other where omicron eases up.
A lot of things in the future are uncertain for Kriz. Kriz is happy to be on campus and close to her senior year as she dives into her final semester of college.
She says she hopes things get a little more normal.
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