Athletes Drive Distinctive Trends of COVID-19 Infection in a College Campus Environment

The COVID-19 pandemic forced most institutions of higher education to offer instruction and activities offsite, impacting millions of people. As universities consider resuming normal operations on campus, evidence-based guidance is needed to enhance safety protocols to reduce the spread of infectiou...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of environmental research and public health 2021-07, Vol.18 (14), p.7689
Main Authors: Hertel, Austin T, Heeter, Madison M, Wirfel, Olivia M, Bestram, Mara J, Mauro, Steven A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Athletes
College campuses
Colleges & universities
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Disease control
Disease transmission
Education
Employees
Epidemics
Fraternities & sororities
Health surveillance
Higher education
Higher education institutions
Humans
Infections
Infectious diseases
Pandemics
Polymerase chain reaction
Population
Public health
SARS-CoV-2
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Social distancing
Student athletes
Testing laboratories
Trends
Universities
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The COVID-19 pandemic forced most institutions of higher education to offer instruction and activities offsite, impacting millions of people. As universities consider resuming normal operations on campus, evidence-based guidance is needed to enhance safety protocols to reduce the spread of infectious disease in their campus environments. During the 2020/2021 academic year, Gannon University in Erie, PA, USA, was able to maintain most of its operations on campus. Part of Gannon's disease mitigation strategy involved the development of a novel in-house, real-time RT-PCR-based surveillance program, which tested 23,227 samples to monitor the presence of COVID-19 on campus. Temporal trends of COVID-19 infection at Gannon were distinct from statewide data. A significant portion of this variance involved student athletes and associated staff, which identified as a higher incidence risk group compared with non-athletes. Rapid identification of athlete driven outbreaks allowed for swift action to limit the spread of COVID-19 among teammates and to the rest of the campus community. This allowed for successful completion of instruction and a modified season for all sports at Gannon. Our findings provide insights that could prove useful to the thousands of institutions seeking to resume a more traditional presence on campus.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph18147689