Take a look at the past, present and future of OU’s coronavirus precautions

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An inside look at how OU has handled the pandemic.

BY MAYA MEADE | ILLUSTRATION BY ABIGAIL SUMMERS

Since the start of the pandemic, over 500,000 people have died from contracting the coronavirus. According to the New York Times, the small community of Athens County has had 4,631 cases and 33 deaths. The Athens community faces additional challenges when dealing with the pandemic due to being the home of a college campus.

Ohio University has implemented a combination of remote and hybrid learning since the spring of 2020, and there have been many adjustments and adaptations to the way students are learning and participating in campus life. With the coronavirus vaccine rolling out and the summer months approaching, OU announced plans for in-person events, summer orientation and classes for the fall semester in 2021.

Dr. Gillian Ice, the special assistant to the president for public health operations, says that OU started using Vault, an online health resource that assists men with low testosterone, for their coronavirus tests this spring semester. Last summer, OU considered using Vault for the fall semester, but it was more expensive than other options, so they partnered with CVS once the tests became available to them later.

“The logistics of managing the CVS approach to get to the point where we could test everybody just wasn’t as feasible for us as the Vault tests, because the

Vault tests can happen very quickly and people can move through very quickly with a small staff of on-site testers,” Ice says.

The combination of efficiency and cost were only part of the decision to switch to Vault tests. Ice says that the “sensitivity and specificity” of the saliva tests that Vault conducts was stronger than the CVS nose swab tests, and result in fewer false negatives and false positives.

Lily Degraw, a junior studying retail fashion merchandising at OU, shares her experience living offcampus during both the fall and spring semesters of the 2020-2021 academic year.

Last semester, Degraw says that she and her seven roommates were contacted by the university twice about going to get a test for coronavirus but have not been contacted at all this semester. One change she thinks Athens County and OU leadership has made is the relaxing of restrictions. Ultimately, she just wants things to go back to normal.

“I would much rather have in-person classes,” she says. “I would just love to go to one class right now that I [find] motivating and [am] involved in.”

According to an email from OU President Duane Nellis, Degraw may get her wish.

In the email sent to students on March 1, Nellis says, “I write today with good news about our university operations for the summer and fall semesters as we plan toward increased in-person offerings in and out of the classroom. I am pleased to share that we will welcome all students to our campuses this coming Fall Semester.”

Kylee Baranek, a sophomore studying strategic communications, reflects on her experiences on campus this year and how she feels about OU including more in-person opportunities.

“It makes me very nervous because corona’s not gone, clearly,” Baranek says. “I don’t know. I feel like if they added doing class in-person, I might go to a couple of classes, but events this spring, absolutely not.”

The uncertainty of how many students will be vaccinated by the summer worries Baranek, but she hopes things will improve. Baranek lived in her sorority house in the fall and spring of this year and has already seen the differences in campus life as more people have returned each semester.

“Last semester doing anything, anywhere the campus was empty,” she says. “It was so weird. This semester I’ll go and get coffee or go to Baker to do something and there’s so many more people. It’s just weird to see because it’s like normal now.”

With more students on campus, coronavirus testing and restrictions will continue on campus.

“We anticipate that we’ll need testing through the fall at least,” Ice says. It depends on “the forecast of when the student age population will have access to the vaccine,” and if there “will be enough disruption in transmission so that the rates go down.”

According to both Nellis and Ice, there is a lot of planning and uncertainty as the warmer months arrive, but the number of in-person events should still increase. Events like Bobcat Student Orientation, the summer orientation that takes place for incoming OU freshman, will be highly controlled with limited attendance, a mask requirement and social distancing.

“They haven’t given me a final plan,” Ice says. “The way that this works is that they’re going to develop a [coronavirus] safety plan, and then a group of us will review it.”

With plans still underway and many parts of the pandemic still unknown, the future is still full of uncertainties.

While many things are shifting back to life before the pandemic, no one can be sure of the future of life on OU’s campus. Achieving the new normal is largely dependent on vaccines and students to gather responsibly.

“The vaccine is going to change the way that the virus behaves,” Ice says. “It’s hard to know ahead of time until we have the data, how it’s going to change. We’re all just giving the best guesses at this point. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and come September, there’s no virus at all. I don’t think we’ll be there, but we can always dream.”b

“We're all just giving the best guesses at this point.”

GILLIAN ICE SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR PUBLIC HEALTH OPERATIONS