Cases at colleges soar; some ‘want to get it over with’
Sun-Sentinel
By Cindy Krischer Goodman and Lois K. Solomon
Sept 27, 2020
In Florida, the number of young people with coronavirus is soaring, driven by college towns where super-spreader students want to live normal lives and show no fear of getting sick.
Over the last month alone, Florida has seen a 23% jump in cases in the 15-24 age group , about 20,302 new infections — a trend that mirrors what is happening nationwide.
“At this point, the thinking has become ‘I’ll get it over with and get antibodies and move on with my life,” said 20-year-old Brittany Gendler. A junior who lives off campus, Gendler says most of her friends at the University of Florida have COVID-19 or are recovering from it.
At Florida State University, Noah Engelhard says students continue to work out at the gym, go to friends’ apartments and their fraternities.
“More of my friends have had it than haven’t. They just want to get it over with,” he said. “We’re not around our parents or grandparents, and no one has gotten really sick from it that I know of.”
The true spread among college students may be impossible to know. Students aren’t always reporting cases or getting tested. But what is known is that young adults are the super-spreaders who have more social interactions and infect large numbers of others on and off campuses.
Resisting restrictions
College students told the Sun Sentinel the big fear on campuses is not the virus, but the restrictions that follow a positive test result and could upend their social activity.
Students who live on-campus must isolate in specified dorms or hotels, while off-campus students must stay at home for 14 days. During that time, the universities typically deactivate the keys that give students access to school facilities. At some schools, students need a negative result to return to a fraternity or sorority house.
Even as universities try to track cases on dashboards, trace students with the virus and isolate them, college students say they go off campus to get tested and don’t report a positive result to their schools to avoid restrictions. Some suffer slight fever or loss of taste and smell, recognize it as COVID-19, and choose not to get swabbed.
“I have friends who can’t smell right now, but they don’t see a need to get tested,” Gendler said.
From the small local colleges to the large state schools, many students view the highly infectious COVID-19 as an inconvenience they need to endure to get immunity as the virus permeates dorms and campus apartments — and eventually spreads into surrounding communities.
A June study by the CDC of cases in the southern United States found increases in positive cases among 20- to 39-year-olds about four-five days before increases in those older than 60.
Dr. Erin Kobetz, vice provost for research and professor of public health sciences at the University of Miami, said it is true that young adults tend not to have severe symptoms “but they are super-spreaders who have the potential to infect others vulnerable to more severe symptoms.”
The challenge of tracking cases
Universities say they are trying to enforce mask-wearing on campus, on-campus testing, and quarantining or isolating when needed. Some schools have symptom trackers and require daily check-ins, while others require temperature checks for students to use the library or visit the student union.
In recent weeks, various Florida university campuses have reported hundreds of new coronavirus cases even as they have tried to clamp down on a lack of social distancing at bars, parties and football games. Florida A&M University imposed a curfew for students inside their residence halls from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Earlier this week, Dr. Alina Alonso, Palm Beach County’s Health Department Director, voiced concerns over the growing number of cases in the 15-24 age range. “Palm Beach Atlantic and FAU are very concerned about the cities right next to them, where despite all their efforts to tell the student body to behave in a certain way when they go out in the city, whether it be Delray, Boca or West Palm Beach, they see very bad behavior,” she said.
Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach requires students to wear masks on campus, including in classrooms. Although this policy was “no big deal for Floridians,” according to assistant vice president Kate Magro, it apparently rattled students from out of state.
“We’ve been telling them, ‘We wear masks here,’” Magro said.
Students at Palm Beach Atlantic with COVID are sent to an isolation dorm and get their meals delivered there. Senior Rachel Smalley was in this quarantine dorm for 13 days after testing “presumed positive” and emerged on Friday. Her roommate had also tested positive.
“I don’t have any symptoms and I never did,” said Smalley, 22. “That’s where it gets frustrating.”
Students are pushing back
Universities hear the frustration and run up against pushback from students.
“What we are experiencing at student health are students who are exposed to someone who don’t want to give information about where they were and who they were with,” said Terry Adirim, Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at Florida Atlantic University’s College of Medicine. “They don’t want to get tested and are refusing even if they need it. This is a new piece and it’s concerning.”
To contain the spread, the University of Miami keeps a dashboard of cases that updates twice a day, including students quarantined and isolated. “We are trying to ensure the infection rate remains low,” Kobetz said.
She said the university officials know students go off-campus for testing and have reached out to nearby sites to request that positive results be reported. But that’s only half the battle.
“We have a robust program but we find students as well as employees who are reluctant to disclose close contacts out of fear that if they nominate people in their social circles they will be stigmatized, socially isolated, or shamed because their positive results landed their friends in 14 days of quarantine,” she said.
Valentina Palm, editor of the newspaper at Florida International University, said the public may never self-reported. SAME AT FAU!!! (BZ)know the extent of outbreaks on campuses. At her university, all cases of students and faculty are
“They are relying on the honor system,” Palm said.
FIU offers free testing to students and employees and operates its own tracking app. Still, she says, “the fact that the dashboard says zero doesn’t mean zero. It just zero new cases were reported.”
The challenge
for students
College students must continually evaluate how much to risk exposure to COVID-19 and whether their friends are in sync with their tolerance level.
Simone d’Antuono, a University of Florida senior from Surfside, said she and her four roommates have been limiting who comes into their apartment. They ask guests to wear masks in the apartment’s common areas.
“If I know people have been cautious, I don’t ask them who they’ve interacted with,” she said. “I don’t ask if they’ve been partying.”
She said she did decline a recent dinner gathering when she saw on social media that two attendees had been partying.
Young adults are getting sick
Palm Beach County Commissioner Melissa McKinlay has been outspoken about the need for young people to take the virus seriously. Her 19-year-old daughter at the University of Central Florida is now recovering from the virus in Orlando.
She shared her agony about her college-age daughter on Facebook:
“I woke up this morning to overnight texts from her scared from excruciating leg pains. Immediately, I called a local doctor who said she needed to get to an ER immediately because one of the rare dangers of COVID is blood clots in legs.”
“Your prayers worked. No blood clots. Likely virus is causing nerve pain in her legs. She is home now resting.”
McKinlay said she has found most young adults are aware of COVID’s risks and are taking precautions, although “a huge component feels they’re invincible.”
“There’s been a lot of irresponsibility at the highest levels of government,” she said in an interview. “Anyone who says young people don’t get harmed is fooling themselves.”
Kenan Radwan said most colleges students have let down their guard because they are young, healthy and believe they easily can kick the virus should they get it. And while that is true, in his case the virus still took a toll.
His head and body ached. “I had every symptom except for a cough,” Radwan said. “I felt awful.”
The 19-year-old returned to South Florida where he got tested, learned he was positive for COVID-19, and stayed in a hotel room for two weeks. He has since tested negative.
“Now I’m supposed to have antibodies but I don’t want to have to go through that again,” said Radwan, who is staying home the rest of the semester.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 108,000 young adults 15 to 24 in Florida have been infected and about 1,000 have been hospitalized from the virus, according to state health data.
“It’s true, they are not as likely to get deathly sick, but that doesn’t mean none of them are getting sick or ending up in the hospital,” said Dr. Ronald Ford, Chief Medical Officer at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood. “I have seen plenty of them in the hospital and the ICU.”
Florida’s leader wants normalcy
Videos and photos of college students not wearing masks or social distancing at parties, restaurants and frat houses are flooding social media. Eleven students at Florida State University were recently arrested and suspended after participating in a giant party without face coverings.
On Thursday, college students who want to live their normal lives got a green light from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis said at a roundtable on public health: “I understand that universities are trying to do the right thing, but I personally think it’s dramatically draconian that a student could get potentially expelled for going to a party. That’s what college kids do.”
DeSantis said he is considering a student “bill of rights” so they can’t be suspended or expelled from school for going to large parties as they have in other states. Florida college administrators have threatened similar crackdowns.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a Harvard Medical School professor who joined DeSantis Thursday at the roundtable discussion agreed with the governor: “Young people should live close to normal lives. As long as they don’t invite their grandmother to the parties, I think they’re fine,” he said. “Keep the grandmas away.”
Gendler, a UF student who worked this summer at Shands Hospital in Gainesville, knows more than just grandmothers get sick from the virus. She recently discovered she has antibodies. “I am less worried, but I am still going to be careful.”