The New York Times - USA (2020-08-03)

A8 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, MONDAY, AUGUST 3, 2020

Tracking an OutbreakU.S. Fallout

that they can be disciplined for
“purposefully invading the per-
sonal space of others,” at least
without a face mask on.
All of these efforts are coming
at great cost, potentially adding
more than $70 billion to the budg-
ets of the nation’s 5,000 colleges.
Yet college administrators say
giving their constituents — stu-
dents and their families — at least
a taste of college life is worth it, if
done in the safest possible way.
Whether those constituents agree
is an open question, and com-
plaints about tuition have led a
growing number of schools to of-
fer rebates.
It is still possible that the frantic
planning will come to naught. Al-
most daily, universities that had
released detailed plans for in-per-
son classes this semester have re-
versed themselves and said they
will go almost entirely online. On
Friday, the University of Pennsyl-
vania became the latest, announc-
ing that almost all undergraduate
classes would be taught online
and that undergraduates return-
ing to Philadelphia, regardless of
whether they were living on or off
campus, would have to take a min-
imum of two Covid tests to partici-
pate in any Penn activities this
fall.
“We have learned how to close
safely,” Hiram Chodosh, president
of Claremont McKenna College, a
liberal arts school in Claremont,
Calif., said. “But the big question
now is, can we open safely?”
Testing capacity, a problem in
communities throughout the
country, varies widely among
schools and could play a major
role in whether they can remain
open during an outbreak.
Big schools, from Syracuse Uni-
versity to the University of Cali-
fornia, San Diego, that have con-
nections to labs, health programs
or medical schools say they are
capable of processing large num-
bers of Covid tests in 24 to 48
hours.
In a typical big-school plan, the
University of California, Berkeley,
will test all residential students
within 24 hours of their arrival,
free of charge, using either a
standard nasal swab or a saliva
test being developed by an inter-
nationally renowned genomics re-
search lab on campus. Students
will subsequently be sequestered
for 7 to 10 days, leaving their sin-
gle dorm rooms only to go
(masked) to the bathroom or to
pick up a meal from a central loca-
tion in the building or outside,
then retested. If they test positive,
they’ll be isolated in a special
dorm. (Some schools hope to cre-
ate supportive communities,
along the lines of an old-fashioned
TB sanitarium, for students who
test positive.) After that, every-
one living on campus will be
tested regularly, twice a month, if
the spit test proves to be accurate
enough.
But little Cornell College in
Iowa, with only 1,000 students, is
not doing universal testing on ar-
rival, believing that it would give a
false sense of security because of
the incubation period. The school

will be doing randomized rapid

testing of 3 percent of its asymp-

tomatic students per week

through its health center, which

will take just a few minutes to get

results. It will reserve the more

sophisticated testing, with the

help of the county health depart-

ment, for students who show

symptoms. Other small schools in

similar situations are finding

themselves at the mercy of pri-

vate labs that can take days to de-

liver results, making results al-

most meaningless.

But even some big schools are

worried about testing backlogs.

“If we have to wait days for a re-

sult,” said Michael Haynie, Syra-

cuse’s vice chancellor of Strategic

Initiatives and Innovation, “the

quarantine requirements will

overwhelm us before we even get

started.”

Alison Byerly, president of La-

fayette College, in Easton, Pa.,

cited worries about testing sup-

plies as a reason to shift all classes

online, and to ask most students to

study from home.

Cost is an issue. Delaware State

University, an historically black

college, is among several that

have enlisted the nonprofit Test-

ing for America and the Thurgood

Marshall College Fund, among

others, to help finance its testing

program.

So is personal freedom. Despite

Florida’s high infection rate, the

University of Florida has declined

to force students to be tested, wor-

rying some local officials and resi-

dents in Gainesville who fear that

students could cause an outbreak

in the city. Although Florida has

among the highest per capita

rates of infection in the country,

the university is mandating test-

ing only for athletes, those who re-

port Covid-19 symptoms and a few

other exceptions. “The Gator Na-

tion will not be deterred,” says the

school’s reopening plan.

“We’re a public institution, so

constitutional considerations

come into play in terms of what we

require — and how we will be able

to enforce that requirement,” said

Ken Garcia, a campus spokesman,

in an email. And testing backlogs

are a major issue, university offi-

cials said in a university webcast.

Equally daunting is the task of

regulating the behavior of an age

group known for its risk-taking

behavior.

Many schools have adopted so-

cial compacts and behavior codes.

Masks are a key part of almost ev-

ery code, to be worn except in situ-

ations like brushing teeth, walk-

ing alone outside, or being alone in

a dorm room.

Most ban partying or socializ-

ing outside “social pods” — the

small groups of students that

some colleges are assigning stu-

dents to, usually based on their

dorms. Penalties for code vio-

lations range from being kicked

out of class and counseled, to evic-

tion from campus housing and ex-

pulsion.

The word “sex” is not men-

tioned in the typical behavior

code. Some colleges may try to

prohibit overnight visits in dorms,

and many are stressing the obvi-

ous risks intimate contact poses of

spreading the virus. But most ad-

ministrators seem to believe that

a rule banning sex is unrealistic,

and are quietly hoping that stu-

dents will use common sense and

refrain from, say, having it with

people outside their pod.

“I think at some point, if you

treat young people like adults,

they are going to act like adults,”

Gordon Gee, the president of West

Virginia University, said. “In the

end, we’re not going to patrol ev-

ery aspect of their lives.”

Or, as one official at another col-

lege, put it: “Could there be love in

the pod? I guess so.”

The behavior codes generally

apply both on and off campus,

though they are clearly harder to

enforce off-campus, and some stu-

dents say that they immediately

began looking for off-campus

housing when they realized where

rules would be strictly super-

vised.

The rules of local governments

also apply.

“In Berkeley, indoor gatherings

which would constitute a party or

are outside of your social pod are

forbidden,” Dan Mogulof, a

spokesman for the university,

said. “So we are and are going to

remain consistent with what the

city’s rules are, and we have to run

everything through them.”

But students say social pods,

especially when assigned by ad-

ministrators, could quickly frac-

ture if one or two students have a

falling out.

West Virginia University has

persuaded the governor to shut

down bars serving students at its

Morgantown campus after a

Covid outbreak in the area, Mr.

Gee said. It has been in effect for

about two weeks, and he would

like to renew it.

“Bars get people together in

small places, and they cause these

kids to really really, really get too

damn close to each other,” Mr. Gee

said.

Travel restrictions are also

common. In an email to students

at the University of Pennsylva-

nia’s Wharton School two weeks

ago, before the school went

mainly online, Maryellen Reilly,

deputy vice dean, said that stu-

dents would be expected to limit

all unnecessary travel.

“Does this mean that if your

spouse or partner lives in D.C. or

N.Y. that you can’t go visit for the

weekend?,” her email said. “Un-

fortunately, yes. The risk of bring-

ing germs back and forth is too

great — this also means we ask

that you don’t have visitors who

could be traveling with the virus.”

Already some students are

pushing back against codes of

conduct and choosing either to

skip the semester or live off-cam-

pus, where they can control their

own environment.

Maria Gray, a junior at Bates

College in Maine, was horrified

when she paged through enroll-

ment documents and found that

she was being asked to sign a legal

document with her digital PIN. “I

acknowledge and agree that by

committing to attend Bates Col-

lege as an on-campus residential

student, I am voluntarily assum-

ing any and all risks,” the state-

ment said, ending with a warning

that the outcome of getting sick

with Covid-19 could be “disability,

or even death.”

That document was scary

enough. But then on Friday, the

school sent her an email saying

that students could have to evacu-

ate campus within 24 to 48 hours if

there were an outbreak, and to

bring only what they could easily

pack. That made a closing seem

inevitable.

“I have faith in people to be re-

sponsible and understand the

stakes,” said Ms. Gray, who now

plans to study online at her home

in Portland, Ore. “But also, this

shouldn’t be a life or death thing.

The stakes just got really high re-

ally fast.”

EDUCATION

Colleges Cram for a Semester-Long Test: ‘Can We Open Safely?’

From Page A

The floor markings in the temporary classrooms on Tulane University’s campus in New Orleans are meant to foster social distancing.

EMILY KASK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Maria Gray, a junior at Bates College in Maine, has decided to

study online at her home in Portland, Ore., instead of in person.

SARAH RICE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

An experimental coronavirus
vaccine developed by Johnson &
Johnson protected monkeys from
infection in a new study. It is the
second vaccine candidate to show
promising results in monkeys this
week.
The company recently began a
clinical trial in Europe and the
United States to test its vaccine in
people. It is one of more than 30
human trials for coronavirus vac-
cines underway across the world.
But until these trials are complete
— which will probably take sev-
eral months — the monkey data
offers the best clues to whether
the vaccines will work.
“This week has been good —
now we have two vaccines that
work in monkeys,” said Angela
Rasmussen, a virologist at Colum-
bia University who was not in-
volved in the studies. “It’s nice to
be upbeat for a change.”
But she cautioned that the new
results shouldn’t be used to rush
large-scale trials in humans. “We
just can’t take shortcuts,” she said.
Unlike many other vaccines in
development that might require
two injections, the Johnson &
Johnson candidate shielded the
monkeys with just one dose, ac-
cording to a study published on
Thursday in Nature.
“It’s a very reassuring level of
protection we saw,” said Dr. Dan
Barouch, a virologist at Beth Is-
rael Deaconess Medical Center in
Boston and a co-author of the new
study.
The study comes just two days

after a similar one was published

on a vaccine tested by Moderna

and the National Institutes of

Health.

But the two vaccines work in

very different ways.

The Moderna vaccine delivers a

kind of genetic material called

“messenger RNA” into cells.

The cells use the vaccine RNA

to produce a protein found on the

surface of the coronavirus, called

spike protein, which then hope-

fully prompts an immune re-

sponse.

RNA-based vaccines are being

tested for a number of diseases,

but none have yet been licensed

for use in people.

In the Moderna study, re-

searchers vaccinated monkeys by

giving them two shots spaced

over four weeks. A month later,

they infected the animals with the

coronavirus. In some of the vacci-

nated monkeys, researchers

could not detect the virus in the

nose or lungs. In others, the virus

replicated slowly before disap-

pearing.

Moderna began Phase 3 trials

of its mRNA vaccine on Monday,

as did Pfizer, which is testing its

own mRNA vaccine.

The Johnson & Johnson vac-

cine, in contrast, is based on a vi-

rus called Ad26, which re-

searchers have modified so that it

carries the coronavirus spike pro-

tein gene. The Ad26 virus can slip

into human cells, but cannot rep-

licate once inside them. Its host

cell then uses the spike gene to

make the coronavirus proteins.

This month, European regula-

tors approved Johnson & John-

son’s Ad26 vaccine for Ebola. It

was the first time this kind of vi-

rus-assisted gene delivery was

approved for any disease. In

March, Dr. Barouch and his col-

leagues designed seven variants

of an Ad26 vaccine for the coro-

navirus. They made tiny changes

to the spike gene to see whether

they could get cells to make more

copies of the viral protein. They

also tested variants that would

make the spike protein more sta-

ble, which might prompt a strong-

er immune response.

Based on earlier research, Dr.

Barouch and his colleagues sus-

pected that the Ad26 vaccine

would be very potent. They de-

cided to run their experiment us-

ing just one dose, to see whether

that was enough to provide immu-

nity.

After a single injection of the

vaccine, they waited six weeks

and then infected the animals with

the coronavirus. Six of the seven

vaccine variants offered monkeys

partial protection against the co-

ronavirus, meaning that the virus

replicated only at low levels in the

animals.

The seventh version proved

more powerful than the rest: Five

out of six monkeys that received it

had no detectable viruses at all.

The sixth had only low levels in its

nose.

“The fact that we could protect

with a single shot in animal mod-

els was quite a positive surprise to

us,” said Dr. Paul Stoffels, the chief

scientific officer of Johnson &

Johnson.

It was this best-performing vac-

cine that Johnson & Johnson used

last week to begin its first human

safety trial, a so-called Phase 1

trial. If it goes well, the company

hopes by September to enter

Phase 3 trials, which test not only

whether the vaccine is safe, but

also whether it works.

The company plans on testing

both single and double doses. Dr.

Rasmussen said that a vaccine

that proved effective with a single

dose would make it far easier to

treat the billions of people who

need it. “Theoretically, you would

need less of it, so you give it to

more people more quickly,” she

said.

Inovio, a company developing a

DNA-based vaccine, announced

Thursday that monkeys chal-

lenged four months after vaccina-

tion had a reduced load of the vi-

rus in their nose and lungs. Their

report has not yet been published

in a scientific journal.

AstraZeneca and the Univer-

sity of Oxford have developed a

vaccine based on yet another type

of modified virus, called ChAdOx1.

In May, they released promising

monkey data, which was also pub-

lished on Thursday in Nature. The

team is now running Phase 3 trials

in people, which could produce re-

sults by October.

“It’s exciting to see the number

of platforms that are showing

promise for a vaccine,” said

Stacey L. Schultz-Cherry, a virolo-

gist at St. Jude Children’s Re-

search Hospital in Memphis who

was not involved in any of the tri-

als.

RESEARCH

Vaccine Delivered in Single Dose Shields Monkeys From Coronavirus, Study Finds

By CARL ZIMMER

Marinela Kirilova doing research for the vaccine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

TONY LUONG FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES