* Charlie Schlenker at WGLT…
Illinois State University President Larry Dietz said Monday he’s closely monitoring the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases among students.
The current tally is 273 ISU student cases in just over a week of classes. Dietz said several things in addition to the raw case count affect any potential decision whether to close the campus.
“It will have to do with isolation capacity. It will have to do with how many folks are hospitalized, and thankfully at this point I’m not aware of any. It’s a moving target we’re monitoring, so I don’t have any specific date or time,” said Dietz.
Dietz said there are 24 students in isolation through on-campus housing, and the campus has plenty of space left for more isolation cases.
Dietz said he believes on-campus behavior by students and staff is in good compliance with mask and social distancing policy. He said he’s aware that off campus and on the weekends, that behavior has not been as consistently safe. He urged students to observe safety protocols and avoid large gatherings.
* Wall St. Journal…
(A)t the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, between 35,000 and 40,000 students returned to campus to begin a mix of online and in-person classes that started Monday. The university has said it believes it can contain the virus, partly by testing students twice a week and processing 10,000 tests a day on campus.
The university expected that between 200 and 300 students would arrive on campus already infected with Covid-19 and that total new cases among students, faculty and staff would reach about 500 this semester. Two university professors, Nigel Goldenfeld, a professor of physics, and Sergei Maslov, a professor of bioengineering and physics, estimated that without the school’s program of frequent testing, contact tracing and isolation, the virus would spread to 20,000 students within a month.
The university’s modeling predicts that most transmission of the virus will occur at restaurants, bars and parties and in classrooms. Its saliva-based test received emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month.
* News-Gazette…
According to UI campus testing data, there were 263 positive cases in the five days from Wednesday through Sunday, with the average rolling positivity rate for the most recent five days being 0.74 percent.
New cases from campus testing for the five days included 30 cases Wednesday, 59 cases Thursday, 65 cases Friday, 50 cases Saturday and 59 cases Sunday.
* Illinois Radio Network…
The mayors of both Champaign and Urbana, the home of the University of Illinois, have issued orders requiring bar and restaurant patrons to to stay seated most of the time. In Champaign, Mayor Deb Feinen issued an order limiting customer seating at Campustown restaurants and bars to outdoors areas only now through Labor Day. Emergency orders from the two mayors also set crowd limits and require face masks and social distancing at private parties on and near the U of I campus.
The University of Illinois requires all students and staff to be tested for COVID-19 twice a week. A study from Harvard and Yale suggests that is the minimum threshold to safely open.
* DeKalb Daily Chronicle…
DeKalb Mayor Jerry Smith said Monday that ’several large gatherings’ were held around Northern Illinois University campus over the weekend, and said he met Monday with NIU President Lisa Freeman and other leaders to talk COVID-19 virus prevention.
“I think everybody is concerned about Northern,” Smith said. “And the fact that there may be not only some positivity but over the weekend there were several large gatherings.” […]
For students, they can pay a $7.90 per credit hour health fee to utilize nasal swab testing services at Northwestern Medicine Student Health Center in the Health Services Building on campus. Testing for students living off campus or in Greek housing is not required, the website states.
“Those who do not should seek out testing from their local providers,” she said.
* WNIU…
Rockford University is a much smaller private school but have had to take their own precautions. Randy Worden is the university’s VP for Student Life. They have 350 students living on-campus, which is what they expected. Over the summer, he says they thought it could be much fewer because of safety restrictions.
“The actual reality has been kind of the opposite of that,” he said. “It seems like people were so ready to have a different experience than what they were having, maybe at home. Students were willing to say, ‘Okay, I understand it’s not going to be 100% of normal kind of collegiate experience, but if it’s 70 or 75, that’s good enough.”
RU removed around half of the furniture in common areas. Buildings cut occupancy in half or capped them at 50 people.
In classes, available seats have signs taped to them to try and ensure distancing. RU has installed yards of plexiglass around campus, especially in buildings and offices where hundreds of students have to interact with one person.
* Tribune…
Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston is going to feel less crowded this fall, with residence hall capacity reduced to about 70% and more than half of all employees still working from home, school officials said Tuesday.
But those estimates didn’t fully assuage concerns from residents that students will instead move into neighborhood apartments and throw raucous parties, potentially accelerating the spread of COVID-19 in a suburb that has so far avoided an uncontrollable outbreak.
Residents raised the issue Tuesday evening during a 90-minute Zoom meeting, billed as a “community town hall,” to discuss NU’s plan for repopulating its suburban campus when classes begin next month.
* Block Club Chicago…
In Chicago, Loyola University has closed its dorms and plans to host most classes online. DePaul University plans to offer classes in-person and online.
* Peoria Journal Star…
Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington reported 40 total COVID cases among its student population. They have returned home to isolate or are doing so in off-campus housing of their own or in university-provided housing.
* Daily Eastern News…
Two Eastern unions are urging Eastern to “put the safety of students, employees and the community first” as the university opens this semester.
The two unions, AFSCME Local 981, which represents building service, clerical, technical and food service workers, and University Professionals of Illinois Local 4100’s Eastern chapter which represents faculty and academic support professionals, are contacting Eastern after the university’s administration ordered clerical and technical employees back to campus after months of successful work from home. […]
“We’ve tried to work with the EIU administration to protect employees, students and the community, but the answer to our proposals has consistently been ‘No’,” AFSCME Council 31 staff representative Natalie Nagel said. “EIU claims it treats employees like family. So why aren’t they enacting common-sense health and safety protocols?”
* WJBC…
Officials at Illinois Wesleyan University announced 11 additional students have tested positive for coronavirus.
“We determined that all 11 new cases are connected to the outbreak announced last week, stemming from off-campus social gatherings in the week before classes began, where the consistent use of masks and physical distancing did not occur,” according to a news release Monday.
The outbreak now consists of 30 students.
* Daily Egyptian editorial…
Originally, SIU was not going to inform the public of COVID-19 outbreaks on campus. It cited privacy concerns as the reason and refused to even release general numbers.
Although SIU eventually reversed its decision, the university will only provide one weekly generic update.
These weekly updates provide a false sense of security. The statistics published do not show every positive case on or off campus, as it is optional for students, faculty and staff who test positive for COVID to report that they work at or attend the university. Currently, the updates do not disclose any locations or the number of students in quarantine.
Additionally, anyone not living in Jackson County will not be included in the SIU count if they test positive for the virus and inform the university.
*** UPDATE *** WILL reporter…
