As university students in Louisiana return to campus learning, Tulane and LSU are now dealing with hundreds of students and staff testing positive for the coronavirus. If the trend continues, universities may face the decision to shut down again.
“I believe most institutions have, if not an absolute number, a situational level in which they would say, ‘ok we are going to go like Notre Dame did’ and do two weeks virtual and see if we can bring everything down,” said Associate Professor in the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Susan Hassig.
LSU has reported 366 COVID-19 cases since August 15th, Tulane has 224 students who tested positive for the coronavirus.
The return to university campuses is not the only thing causing concern over a possible spike in positive coronavirus cases. This upcoming Labor Day could become a COVID-19 spreading event.
Labor Day is Monday but traditionally the weekend before is celebrated with parties or large gatherings of family and friends.
Hassig says the challenge is having the general public break away from those traditions in an effort to stop the virus spread.
“It is a very challenging thing to get people to buy into,” she said. “It’s a long weekend a traditional time to have gatherings and breaking those traditions can be difficult.”
Hassig says even small groups of people at a party increase the risk of contracting the disease.
“The thing I think, people have to think about is when you get together in a gathering of people you don’t normally live with, every one of those people is bringing to the party everyone they have interacted with for the past two weeks,” Hassig said. “It may look like a party of five or ten but it may actually be 50, 60, 100 in your backyard theoretically.”
