A14 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, MARCH 14 , 2020
The coronavirus outbreak
BY SUSAN SVRLUGAOrly Levy was fast asleep in the
middle of the night in her Prague
apartment when the building,
full of American study-abroad
students, erupted. She could hear
people screaming and crying,
yanking drawers open to throw
their belongings into bags. A
friend rushed into her room to
tell her they couldn’t get back
into the United States.
Half the people in the building
had already bolted for the air-
port.
President Trump had just giv-
en a speech from the Oval Office
announcing that he would ban
travel from continental Europe to
the United States beginning Fri-
day at midnight.
Many students, nervous about
the novel coronavirus, had stayed
awake into the middle of the
night to hear his address — and
didn’t hear the clarifications that
followed, including that Ameri-
can citizens were not part of the
exclusion.
Even the timing was unclear to
the students: Did midnight mean
the first moments of Friday, or
the end of that day? And in what
time zone? “It was so vague and
there was so much panic,” Levy
said. “People were like, ‘I need to
leave right now.’”
It was a week when the virus
hit home for many in the United
States. This week, colleges sent
students home, cities canceled
events, and libraries and muse-
ums closed as case counts and
death tolls mounted.
For Ofer Levy, who has been
racing to combat the virus as
director of the Precision Vaccines
Program at Boston Children’s
Hospital, it was the moment
when the pandemic hit him per-
sonally, as a father.
It was also the week when
covid-19 hammered study-
abroad programs. Hundreds of
thousands of Americans study
abroad every year, and though
many students have returned to
the United States from their pro-
grams, especially in hard-hit ar-
eas such as China and Italy, many
were still in Europe at the time of
the president’s speech. The State
Department and the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention
issued sharply escalated warn-
ings this week.
That set off a wild scramble
among students in Europe — and
among universities and other
study-abroad programs.
The situation is unprecedent-
ed in recent memory, experts
said. People from 400 institu-
tions took part in a virtual meet-
ing about the issue Thursday,
said Brad Farnsworth, vice presi-
dent of global engagement with
the American Council on Educa-
tion.Johns Hopkins University sus-
pended all of its spring under-
graduate study-abroad programs
worldwide Thursday and advised
students to use the university’s
travel service for help with limit-
ed flight availability. University
System of Maryland Chancellor
Jay A. Perman said in a statement
Thursday, “In light of President
Trump’s new travel restrictions,
I’m advising USM universities to
recall all students studying
abroad, including those not cur-
rently in Europe.”
New York University urged its
800 students studying in conti-
nental Europe to return and dis-
patched staff to each location to
help with travel plans and other
logistics.
Canceling a program launches
a host of problems, Farnsworth
said, including how to get stu-
dents home, the question of
whether flying exposes them to
more risk than staying where
they are, where to quarantine
them if needed, and how to
continue the studies for which
they have already paid.
“We understand it’s a compli-
cated situation,” said Levy, a pro-
fessor of pediatrics at Harvard
Medical School. “Restricting trav-
el is one way to the reduce the
spread. I am an infectious-dis-
ease doctor, after all. We’re also
parents, and we were worried
about our daughter.”Sharon Levy, who also is a
pediatrician and has a master’s
degree in public health, said she
wasn’t terribly worried that her
daughter would become sick. But
the president’s speech concerned
her. “The idea that your kid is
trapped in another country —
that feels entirely different,” said
Levy, director of the Adolescent
Substance Use and Addiction
Program at Boston Children’s
Hospital.
Orly Levy has always loved
traveling, and knew, even when
she was a little girl, that she
wanted to study abroad in col-
lege. “This is something that I
had looked forward to, really,
almost my entire life,” she said.
As soon as she got to Prague in
January, t he University of Califor-
nia at Santa Cruz junior began
taking classes on the politics and
economics of the European
Union and the rise of populism,
and traveled to Rome and Lon-
don and Budapest on weekends.
She planned to spend the sum-
mer in Israel.
As c ovid-19 spread, her parents
kept monitoring risk and weigh-
ing that against the richness of
the experience their daughter
was having.
They knew young people were
less likely to become seriously ill
with covid-19. Ofer Levy’s lab is
working to develop a vaccine
targeting older populations,those at greatest risk — and a
population with a different im-
mune system from younger
adults'. Harvard and the hospital
announced the novel effort this
week.
After cases surfaced in Milan,
when a friend asked whether
they could still go to Amalfi for
spring break, Orly Levy’s re-
sponse was, “Of course!”
But as more cases popped up,
she began to limit her travel. Still,
she was determined not to leave
Prague. “This is my one chance to
be abroad,” she was thinking.
“I’m going to do whatever I can to
not come home.”
This week, Czech officials took
sudden measures to combat the
virus. Then Trump spoke.
As Ofer Levy woke at 3 a.m.
Thursday for another long day in
the lab chasing a vaccine, he saw
flashes of light in the bathroom:
His phone was lighting up with
messages from his daughter.
She told her parents: "‘It’s time
for me to come home.’”
Ofer Levy said they set up a
command center of sorts at their
home in Cambridge and tried to
find flights out of Prague.
A travel agent found a flight
that could get their daughter to
Boston this weekend — but she
would have had to leave her dorm
within 10 minutes to get to the
gate, and she hadn’t begun to
pack.The race against the clock was
too much, Levy said, and they
chose a flight to London, and
then from there to the United
States.
“Things can change so fast,”
Orly Levy said. “I can’t even
process how fast everything has
come.” Suddenly, adventure and
travel and independence didn’t
sound so idyllic. “In times like
this when things get so scary and
you feel like the world is turning
upside down,” she said, “you just
want to be home.”
During her flight Friday from
Prague to London, she got an
email from the airline announc-
ing a new travel restriction and
advising her to book a different
flight to the United States.
Her parents — who along with
working intensely were also try-
ing to figure out what to do with
her younger brother, whose
school had abruptly shut down —
quickly found her another flight.
Orly Levy ran through the
airport, lugging her bags, packed
for months away, dropping
things and then, of course, having
to frantically repack because the
bags were overweight.
She made it.
“My line to check in to my
flight to Boston was literally all
American study-abroad stu-
dents,” she said, “trying to get
home.”
[email protected]News of travel ban s ent mistaken American students abroad into a frenzy
BY LAURA MECKLER
AND VALERIE STRAUSSSchools in a cascading wave of
states prepared to close next
week, interrupting the education
of millions of students amid
growing fears of the coronavirus
pandemic.
Even in places with scant evi-
dence of the disease, governors
were ordering shutdowns. That
left school leaders scrambling to
arrange online learning, meal
distribution and accommoda-
tions for children with disabili-
ties, with many systems writing
plans on the fly.
On Friday, school leaders in
the District of Columbia, Los
Angeles and San Diego and gov-
ernors in Pennsylvania, Illinois,
Virginia, Wisconsin, Louisiana,
Alabama, Utah and West V irginia
joined five other states in closing
their entire school systems.
“There is a downside to this,
but it is the right thing in my
mind to do,” West Virginia Gov.
Jim Justice (R) said. At the time
of his announcement, his state
did not have a confirmed case of
coronavirus, but he said: “We’ve
got a monster that is looming.”
In New York City, the nation’s
largest district with more than
1 million students, pressure built
to close the schools, with calls for
closure from the United Federa-
tion of Te achers and the speaker
of the New Yo rk City Council,
Corey Johnson, who said on Twit-
ter: “It is not time to panic but it
is time to act.” An online petition
urging closure had more than
235,000 signatures.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) was
resisting, saying he would do his
“damnedest” to keep schools
open.
“We have so many working
New Yorkers who have no other
place for their kids to be during
the day,” he told CNN on Thurs-
day. He noted that parents forced
to stay home with their children
include health-care profession-
als. “We can’t afford a situation
where we start to lose all our
public servants because they
have to stay home because school
is not in session.”
Te achers unions across the
country have pushed for clo-
sures. Michael Mulgrew, presi-
dent of United Federation of
Te achers in New York, argued
that moving students around the
city every day was dangerous and
that the best way to stop the
spread of the virus is to close the
schools. “Let’s close it down,” he
said.
Closing schools is not advised
in most cases under new guid-
ance issued by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
The document advises that a
two-week school closure early in
the spread of covid-19, the dis-
ease caused by coronavirus, is
unlikely to stem it. Instead, it
causes significant disruption for
families, schools and those who
may be responding to outbreaks
in the health-care settings, and it
may increase infection rates of
older adults who care for grand-
children.
The CDC suggests officials
consider closures only if there is
“substantial” community trans-
mission of disease. But the docu-
ment was not released until
Thursday afternoon, days after
school officials began to an-
nounce closures.
Federal health officials were
not openly critical of state ac-
tions, but one federal official,
who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to give a candid as-
sessment, said: “It’s not neces-
sary to take aggressive actions in
areas where there isn’t spread of
this virus or there’s not been
sustained community spread.”
The guidance suggests alter-
natives for schools, such as stag-
gering recess and canceling as-
semblies, to reduce times when
large numbers of children would
be together.
Nonetheless, Thursday and
Friday brought a growing num-
ber of states and large school
systems shutting down for two-
and three-week breaks, withsome saying they did not know
when classes would resume.
There was confusion in Flori-
da. Some districts reported that
the state was ordering a shut-
down, but a spokeswoman for the
state said it was a strong recom-
mendation. Even before that,
leaders in two of the state’s
largest counties — Miami-Dade
and Palm Beach — had decided
on their own to close.
Palm Beach County Superin-
tendent Donald E. Fennoy II said
his move was a first step to
ensuring health and welfare of
students and staff. “All of the
other details will be worked out
in a timely fashion,” he promised.
School systems were finding
those details challenging, partic-
ularly serving children from low-
income families who are less
likely to have home computers
and Internet connections andmore likely to rely on schools for
meals.
In Michigan, schools were set
to close Monday, but the plan for
engaging students in one rural
district was still being devised
Friday, said Becky Cranson, an
English teacher at Bronson Com-
munity Schools in southern
Michigan.
She said the district knows it
cannot rely on virtual learning
because many of the neediest
students do not have Internet
access. Instead, she is sending
students home with directions to
complete any missing assign-
ments.
“There was not enough warn-
ing to plan anything more sub-
stantial,” she said.
The challenge was less daunt-
ing in affluent districts such as
Upper Arlington City Schools,
outside Columbus, Ohio. Super-intendent Paul W. Imhoff said the
district has only a handful of
students who qualify for free
lunches, and it is prepared to
deliver them meals.
Every student is issued a com-
puter already, he said. The vast
majority of students have Inter-
net access and the school is
providing h ot spots f or those who
don’t. For upper grades, teachers
will record lessons and hold vir-
tual office hours to answer ques-
tions using a video conferencing
tool. Elementary grades will be
provided a suite of activities with
guidelines attached about how
much time to spend reading and
doing other work.
Imhoff said he felt ready but
was still shocked by the unfold-
ing events. “We’re all scram-
bling,” he said.
To o often, schools simply post
worksheets online and call thatdistance learning, said Richard
Culatta, chief executive of the
International Society for Te ch-
nology in Education, which ad-
vises schools on the matter. “It’s a
horrible way to do learning,” he
said.
With the cascade of school
closings, his group is working to
help districts devise systems that
will take advantage of the oppor-
tunities for distance learning.
For instance, he said, if students
are studying geology, they might
be asked to go find a particular
type of rock outside and take a
photo.
Another challenge for schools
with low-income populations is
delivering meals that students
rely on when they are not in
school. The Agriculture Depart-
ment loosened some rules
around the school lunch pro-
gram, and Democrats in Con-
gress are pushing for even more
flexibility. But districts were left
to find their own solutions.
In the Newark City Schools in
Ohio, a majority of 6,700 stu-
dents are from low-income fami-
lies, said Superintendent Doug
Ute. The district plans to keep
one common area i n each of its 12
school buildings open for part of
each school day, probably the
gymnasium. “We can control a
single area and keep it clean after
students leave each day,” he said.
Students who ordinarily eat
breakfast and lunch at s chool can
come and get it. In addition,
school buses will go into the
community to deliver food at
specific spots, he said.
Another big worry is how
schools will serve students with
disabilities. This week, the U.S.
Education Department issued
guidance reminding districts of
their responsibilities to serve
these students, but experts said it
will be a challenge.
“The biggest worry is that
special education services, and
related services like speech ther-
apy and occupational therapy,
will basically stop,” said Chris
Yun, an education policy analyst
for Access Living, a nonprofit in
Chicago that advocates for and
helps people with disabilities.
“The longer the closures are,
I’m pretty sure that this big
population of students will re-
gress because they will not be
receiving anything close to the
work they could have been get-
ting in school,” she said.
This mix of challenges has
school districts and parents
across the country trying to bal-
ance the tangible downsides of
closure against the fears and
unknowns of the coronavirus.
“There are no good options
here. The risks are obvious if
schools stay open. At the same
time, so many families depend on
our schools for food and child
care during the day,” said Jenna
Lempesis, a fourth-grade teacher
in New York. “Many do not have
the technology necessary for on-
line learning. This virus has real-
ly laid bare the inequity among
our nation’s schoolchildren: Who
can afford to have schools closed
and who can’t?”
[email protected]
[email protected]Lena H. Sun contributed to this report.A coast-to-coast improvisation as schools prepare to close
ANGUS MORDANT/BLOOMBERG NEWS
A member of the New York National Guard walks by New Rochelle High School as troops sanitize the building and other areas nearby.MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST
Karen Salmon, superintendent of schools in Maryland, announces
on Thursday that schools in the state will close for two weeks.DORAL CHENOWETH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) holds a news conference on Thursday.
DeWine has ordered all schools in the state to shut down.