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About a month after the Harvard campus took over, University President Lawrence S. Bacow praised the effectiveness of Harvard’s Covid-19 protocols and the willingness of students, faculty and staff to follow them.
Despite an initial spike in campus cases, Bacow said in an interview on Tuesday that he was “very satisfied” with meeting indoor mask requirements, noting that the University had avoided any serious outbreaks.
“We will still have some level of infection on campus, unfortunately, until this virus is completely gone, but we manage to keep it under control at this time,” he said.
During the week of August 29, 135 Harvard affiliates tested positive for the virus, including 95 undergraduates. Bacow said the university had anticipated an increase in the number of returning students from around the world.
“We knew we had people returning to campus who hadn’t gone through the same type of strict testing regime that they would encounter when they were here,” he said. “So there were people who came back infected. “
The school increased the pace of mandatory testing for residents of undergraduate housing on campus on September 2. increase the requirement from one week to three times per week. Bacow said the change was mainly due to the increase in cases at peer institutions, such as Duke and Cornell. Still, he defended the decision to start the quarter with a lower test cadence.
“We’re always trying to find what is the right point to land, where we’re not too intrusive in terms of what we’re asking people to do but where the benefits are worth the costs,” Bacow said. “When we started we thought we were in the right place. “
“It was less the increase in cases on our campus, which was still quite modest compared to what other campuses have seen,” he added.
Bacow noted that the University has switched to relying on its own Covid-19 testing facility, which he says has reduced costs given the high number of tests.
Campus case rates have plummeted from the first few weeks, with an overall campus positivity rate of 0.16% in the past seven days. Harvard University Health Services Executive Director Giang T. Nguyen said the University has not yet identified a transmission of Covid-19 in a classroom.
Bacow also said in Tuesday’s interview that the university plans to hold in-person debut exercises for the class of 2022 this spring.
“We are assuming it will be in person,” he said.
The school has also pledged to hold ceremonies for the 2020 and 2021 classes, which each received a virtual graduation ceremony due to the pandemic. Bacow reiterated that promise on Tuesday, saying Harvard plans to keep them in the spring. He declined to provide more details, but said he hoped to make an official announcement this semester.
“We want to make sure that when we announce the date, we’re ready to answer any questions that will inevitably follow,” Bacow said. “People are working feverishly right now to try to put these plans in place. “
– Editor Jasper G. Goodman can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on twitter @Jasper_Goodman.
—Editor Kelsey J. Griffin can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @kelseyjgriffin.
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