26 SCIENCE NEWS | February 27, 2021C. CHANG C. CHANGFEATURE | COVID-19 ON CAMPUSUniversity of Washington, Seattle
Fraternity and sorority houses — where students
live and gather for parties — became sources
of COVID -19 outbreaks at many schools. The
University of Washington experienced a summer
fraternity outbreak and applied lessons learned.
“It was late June, I was in the car, and I get a
call from a [fraternity] chapter president that he
has three members living in his facility that are
symptomatic,” says Erik Johnson, Interfraternity
Council president at the time. “We went into
emergency lockdown mode.”
All 25 fraternity houses went into quarantine
that same day. Within 48 hours, a testing site was
set up to test every resident.
Johnson describes a major team effort: The
university set up testing; the county public health
department, which had responded to the first
known U.S. COVID -19 outbreak, handled contact
tracing; and fraternity leadership communicatedStudents: 1,000 living
on or near campus
during summer quarter;
6,200 during fall quarter
(typical enrollment is
30,000)
Testing: Weekly
targeted random
sampling with PCR tests
Safety measures:
Masks required
indoors and outdoors;
contact tracing; event
restrictions varied
Spring semester plans:
Students must get
tested before returning
to campusthe importance of quarantines and other safety
guidelines. The summer outbreak was brought to
heel in about two weeks, with the last case of the
outbreak identified on August 8.
Both the university and student leaders used
that summer experience to prepare for the fall.
Genevieve Pritchard, 2020 president of the
UW Panhellenic Association, which oversees
sororities, joined weekly meetings with teams
from the local public health department and the
university’s environmental health and safety
office before sorority houses opened. Students
could attend webinars to ask questions.
When an outbreak hit sororities at the start of
fall quarter, infected students were quickly identi-
fied and isolated. The university reported 200 new
cases the week ending October 4, 76 new cases the
next week and 42 new cases the week after that.
Only about a fifth of the usual student population
had come to campus.University of Washington — COVID-19 casesUniversity of Washington — testingNew daily cases
(7-day rolling average)DateDateJune 1,
2020June 1,
2020July 1July 1August 1August 1October 1October 1September 1September 1November 1November 1December 1December 1January 1,
2021January 1,
2021302010251550About
5,000 more
students arrive
as classes beginSummer fraternity
outbreak peaksFall quarter endsUniversity-run
New daily tests testing begins
(7-day rolling average)5003001004002000Data are from the University of
Washington’s COVID-19 dashboard:
bit.ly/UWcovidtracking.
Case and test numbers are rolling
seven-day averages.covid-colleges.indd 26covid-colleges.indd 26 2/10/21 9:25 AM2/10/21 9:25 AM