UNIVERSITIES COMBAT OMICRON SURGE WITH DIFFERENT TACTICS

Universities across Texas responded to the omicron surge and the pandemic with varying measures. How well have they succeeded?

Looking at UT, UTSA, UTA, TAMU and UNT in comparison to UTD, most Texan universities have taken similar steps to UTD in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic. Daily health checks, proactive testing and constant mask and vaccine encouragement are a common theme across all of these schools. However, there are some differences in approach, especially regarding the beginning of the spring semester.

The biggest difference between campus responses is in the in-person spring semester start date. Most campuses opted to use virtual instruction to delay the start of in-person operations for two to three weeks, with the exception of TAMU and UNT. The UT system collectively delayed in-person instruction, with UT set to return Jan. 31 while the rest of the system declared they would be online through Feb. 4. However, there doesn’t appear to be a strong link between in-person instruction and reported case numbers; for instance, UNT – already a week into in- person instruction – reported 117 cases at time of reporting, while UTA has reported 723 active cases without yet teaching classes in person.

Of the six universities compared above, UTD has the lowest amount of reported active cases: 73. However, UTD is also the only university in the UT System without on-campus testing either by demand or by appointment, which may be deflating that statistic.

Vice President and Chief of Staff Rafael Martín said that will likely remain the case throughout the course of the semester, as UTD doesn’t have access to the same inhouse medical infrastructure as other large universities.

“Realistically speaking, we don’t have the bandwidth to provide the walk-in, ondemand testing. Most of the institutions that I've seen that are providing that sort of service have health science centers associated with them. Many of them have nursing schools or even medical schools, and they're leaning heavily on that infrastructure. That makes a lot of sense,” Martín said. “We obviously don't have that. When we were doing asymptomatic testing, we had the capacity to do up to three or 4,000 tests a week. That's maximum capacity, and clearly that's not going to get you through 30 to 35,000 people employees and students – on any kind of regular basis.”

Another difference in approach across universities has been the vaccine incentive programs offered by the schools. UTD had the most direct incentive program, offering a blanket $100 amount to any student that reported their vaccination via the self-report form, alongside entering vaccinated students into a raffle for additional prizes, including tuition and housing rebates. Every other school also offered drawings into a raffle, but few offered anything beyond that. UTA –also the only campus still actively providing incentives – did offer direct compensation to students alongside the raffle entry, but that came in the form of $50 worth of gift cards to the university bookstore per dose.

A perfect comparison between vaccination on public school campuses remains impossible because of their inability to compel students to report a positive case of COVID-19 or their vaccination status. Due to Governor

Due to the high transmissibility of the omicron variant and the increased demand for testing in the North Texas region, the randomized surveillance testing program has been temporarily suspended. Faculty choosing to teach in-person are being asked to utilize seating charts to aid the contact tracing process, which will remain the norm when the University returns to in-person instruction. Vice President and Chief of Staff Rafael Martín said that UTD continues to closely monitor the status of omicron cases locally and expects that a final verdict on whether Feb. 7 will mark the date of that return will be made by the end of the week.

“[The decision to return] is about the totality of circumstances and environment that we're facing in the North Texas region. We've set February 7 as our date to return to in-person classes,” Martín said, “and we will make a decision at the latest by a week from [Jan. 21] about whether or not we're going to hold to that, or whether we're going to extend kind-of-remote instruction for an additional period. So we will give the campus community at least a full week's notice before we make that determination.”

Martín emphasized that the decision to return is not being made based off the number of positive tests on any single day, but rather in the context of how COVID-19 – specifically, the omicron variant – is impacting relevant communities. That list begins with the surrounding municipalities, but also includes analysis of broader public-health trends. Particular attention is being paid to the recovery trajectory of previous hotspots, like regions of South Africa, which have almost uniformly seen a rapid spike in case counts accompanied by an equally-sharp decline after a few weeks – and modelling by Associate Professor Dr.Timothy Bray suggests the metroplex