Sunday, January 24, 2021

The Value of Virus Mitigation - Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

Colleges should test students and employees for COVID-19 at least twice a week, with results available within 48 hours, says a new report from the American College Health Association. The report was released at the same time a new study in Annals of Internal Medicine found that the combination of extensive social distancing and mandatory mask wearing prevents 87 percent of campus COVID-19 cases, and does so cost-effectively. Layering routine testing with a one-day lag in results onto these twin policies is even better, preventing 96 percent of infections, the study says. But doing so would require low-cost tests to be economically attractive to most institutions.