Assessing Classroom and Laboratory Spread of COVID-19 in a University After Elimination of Physical Distancing

• Published in: American journal of infection control 2023-07, Vol.51 (7), p.S5-S5
• Main Authors: Rebmann, Terri, Arnold, Lauren, Loux, Travis, Gomel, Ashley, Lugo, Kaeli, Bafageeh, Firas, Elkins, Haley
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0196-6553; 1527-3296
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ajic.2023.04.131

Physical distancing was one of the most difficult COVID-19 mitigation strategies to implement for institutes of higher education (IHE), and many IHEs dropped this protocol in fall 2021 despite the unknown risk of doing so. The purpose of this study was to assess classroom spread of COVID-19 at an IHE without classroom physical distancing. Data was collected during the fall 2021 semester at a medium-sized private IHE. Universal masking, robust contact tracing, a vaccination requirement policy, and enforced testing were in place. Exposures were classified as classroom versus social/non classroom. ANOVA and chi-squared tests were used to identify significant relationships between demographic and other characteristics and COVID-19 test result. Logistic regression was conducted to investigate the relationship between exposure type and test result. There were 148 student and faculty cases identified with 1,660 associated close contacts (mean = 11.2 close contacts per case). Close contacts had an average of 1.5 exposures (range: 1-14). A third of exposures (31.2%, n=518) occurred in social settings, 63.7% (n=1,058) were in a classroom, and 5.1% had both exposure types. Among all close contacts, 26.3% (n=63) tested positive. Close contacts were significantly more likely to test positive if they had a social exposure (61 of 602; 10.1%) compared to a classroom exposure (2 of 1058; 0.2%) (OR 59.5, CI 18.5 – 363.9, p