The Characteristics of Student SARS-CoV-2 Cases on an Urban University Campus: Observational Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Academic institutions are central hubs for young adults, laden with academic and social interactions and communal living arrangements, heightening the risk of transmission of many communicable diseases, including COVID-19. Shortly after the start of the fall 2020 academic year, institutions of higher learning were identified as hot spots for rises in COVID-19 incidence among young adults. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to identify the characteristics of student SARS-CoV-2 cases, identify the extent to which the student population adhered to preventative strategies, and examine behaviors that would put them at higher risk of contracting or spreading COVID-19. METHODS: This observational study comprises 1175 university students at The George Washington University in Washington, DC, with a confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis between August 3, 2020, and November 30, 2021. Case investigation and contact tracing tools were developed by the Campus COVID-19 Support Team and captured in REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture). Trained case investigators were notified of a case and attempted to contact all cases within 24 hours of the case receiving their lab result. Associations between case characteristics and number of contacts were examined using Wilcoxon rank sum tests. Knowledge of exposure, behaviors since exposure, student residence status, and fraternity and sorority life affiliation were examined using chi-square tests. RESULTS: Positive student cases reported a median of 3 close contacts, and 84.6% (993/1175) reported at least one symptom with a median of 4 COVID-19 symptoms. Congestion (628/1175, 53.4%), cough (530/1175, 45.1%), and headache (484/1175, 41.2%) were the most frequently reported symptoms. Moreover, 36% (415/1160) reported that they did not know how they were exposed to the virus. Among those aware of contact with a COVID-19 confirmed case, 55.1% (109/198) reported the contact was a close friend or family member, and 25.3% (50/198) reported that it was someone with whom they lived. Athlete (vs nonathlete; P<.001), on-campus (vs off-campus; P<.001), and undergraduate (vs graduate; P=.01) students all reported a significantly higher number of contacts. Students living on campus were more likely to report attending campus events in the 2 days prior to symptom onset or positive test result (P=.004). Students with fraternity or sorority affiliation were more likely to report attending campus events in the 2 days prior to symptom onset or positive test result (P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19 cases have not yet stabilized to a predictable state, but this study provides case characteristics and insights for how academic institutions might prepare to mitigate outbreaks on their campuses as the world plans for the transition from pandemic to endemic COVID-19.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.017 | 0.061 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".