Columbia Daily Spectator
Students who test positive for COVID-19 after returning to campus will be required to isolate in-place, the University announced in an email earlier today that outlined updated COVID protocols for the spring semester.
Students in isolation will be allowed to leave their rooms to pick up food up to three times a day, attend medical appointments, or recieve treatment, and they will still have the option to relocate and isolate off-campus. Students who test positive and have underlying health conditions or symptoms “that require close monitoring” will receive separate isolation housing.
The change in isolation location for undergraduate students comes days after the University announced that it would shorten the isolation period for asymptomatic students who test positive for COVID-19 following updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the New York State Department of Health.
The CDC changed their recommended isolation period for individuals who test positive for COVID-19 and are asymptomatic from 10 days to five days of isolation followed by five days of mask-wearing on December 27, 2021. The CDC also recommended a quarantine period of five days for individuals exposed to COVID-19 who are not vaccinated or not fully vaccinated with a booster, a policy which the University also implemented. The CDC’s decision to cut isolation periods in half was met with skepticism, as it came after companies like airlines urged the CDC to make the change so that workers could return to normal operations.
The University also issued updates on dining and social gatherings: dining halls will be grab-and-go until Jan. 24; non-academic Columbia gatherings will be prohibited until the end of January; and indoor social gatherings are strongly discouraged. This guidance follows prior decisions to move to remote learning for the first two weeks of the spring semester and mandate vaccine boosters by Jan. 31.
The new isolation protocol is a departure from the past two semesters, when all students who tested positive isolated in a separate residential building. The email sent today to undergraduate students cited the Omicron variant’s tendency to “result in asymptomatic or mild infections” as grounds to change isolation policies.
Just before winter break, the University saw a spike in cases when nearly 900 Columbia affiliates tested positive in just one week, prompting a rapid, encouraged transition to virtual exams. Many students were placed in isolation housing near the beginning of winter break, with some criticizing the University’s response to the surge in cases. The University continues to maintain that it has never run out of isolation capacity, though some sources allege that students who tested positive for COVID-19 in late December were asked to isolate at home if possible and others isolated in hotel rooms.
The isolate in-place guidelines present additional complications for students who live in close quarters with roommates or suitemates. The University-issued guidance states that only students with “documented health risks” can move into separate housing if their roommate tests positive and must isolate in-place. Roommates of students who test positive must wear a mask at all times, including when they are sleeping.
Peer institutions are taking different approaches to the Omicron-induced spike in COVID-19 cases. The University of Pennsylvania will require double masking, KN95, or N95 masks on campus, and Yale University will institute a campus-wide quarantine until early February. Harvard University issued updated isolation policies last week similar to those at Columbia, including the isolate in-place mandate.
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