COVID Ops media briefing: Ice addresses high positivity rate, in-person classes

Gillian Ice presented the rapid increase in COVID cases on campus and in the community to members of the media. Screenshot by Zach Zimmerman.

Dr. Gillian Ice, the special assistant to the president for Public Health Operations, did not stray from answering bluntly about Ohio University’s current situation at the COVID Operations media briefing Wednesday morning.  

“We have a huge caseload right now, like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” Ice said. 

Ice said there has been a rapid increase in cases on campus and in the community. She credited 2,000 reported positive cases to students contracting COVID-19 during break or post move-in as the reason for overwhelming COVID Ops.

Ice said the positivity rate is between 10-15%, which she considered “really high” relative to what Ohio U has seen in the past.  

In-person learning and events

Ice explained the decision to keep classes in-person, rather than a virtual start of the spring semester, was based on positivity rates remaining static regardless of whether or not classes were virtual. She said when the university had virtual classes, it did not decrease students’ risk of getting infected. 

“We talked a lot about what our options are, and what the science is telling us and what our past experience is telling us,” Ice said. “In the past, when we’ve gone virtual, one of the things that we’ve noticed is students still came to Athens. And they still engaged in activities that we’d prefer that they didn’t. As far as safety goes, we know that having classes online encourages students to move back and forth between home and school, and actually increases the rate of disease.” 

Ice doubled down on the stance that in-person classes do not cause an increase in risk of infection. 

“That’s the kind of behavior that we certainly would like people to remember, that any time you let your guard down, particularly with omicron, which is highly infectious, you place yourself at risk of transmission,” Ice said. “We know that not everyone is going to be 100% of the time, keep that mask on and be cautious, like nobody’s capable of doing that, well certainly people are but you’d have to be shut in, right. So in order to avoid infection, you’d basically have to not leave your house. And the reality of it is that’s not what all of us are doing. So is going into the classroom increasing the risk of infection? Not based on the information that we have.” 

Ice also said starting out the semester virtually would not have made sense for beating the peak of cases.

“All the modeling is suggesting that we’re not going to reach the peak in Ohio until the end of the month,” Ice said. “Two weeks is not going to get us to the end of the surge.” 

As for faculty with medical conditions, Ice said they can apply to hold their courses virtually. 

“We have a process for faculty who do have medical conditions or family medical conditions where they can apply for …online (teaching options). That process existed. It has existed since the fall, (and) continues to exist,” Ice said. 

Ohio U President Hugh Sherman told Student Senate Wednesday evening that “most people are predicting” we will see a “downward movement in the number of cases in the next 14 days,” as previously reported by The New Political. He also shared hopes that later in the semester the pandemic will downgrade to an epidemic. 

However, Ice added that Ohio U will have high rates of transmission “probably through February or longer.” 

“What we do know is when students are in the classroom, and everyone is wearing a mask, and we have a 90% vaccination rate, that the transmission risk in the classroom is not the concern,” Ice said. 

Ice credited COVID fatigue and a lack of precaution outside the classroom to the high transmission rates.

“Now if they’re (students) not in the classroom, and they’re not testing, then we have less ability to promote healthy behaviors,” Ice said. “The other thing that I will say is, Yes, transmission is very high. And people are COVID fatigued. People are letting their guard down. So where we are seeing transmission is when folks get together with others, and they’re not taking precaution outside of the classroom.”  

Outside the classroom, however, larger events continue to be held. Sherman was questioned at Student Senate’s Wednesday meeting as to why student organizations were advised to operate virtually despite fans continuing to attend athletic events. Sherman admitted that while in attendance at Ohio U’s last basketball game, he’d say only 40% of fans had masks on. 

Housing

As of Jan. 18, there are four dorms at the orange level, according to the COVID-19 Dashboard. 47 isolation spaces are currently in use. 

“We had a few (residence halls) last week that popped into the red status, and then popped back out in a day,” Ice said. 

Ice said there are a number of options for if or when quarantine and isolation spaces fill up. 

“We’re watching that closely, obviously. It kind of depends on the particular context of what happens. We do have quite a few students that are opting to go home, with the isolation and quarantine,” Ice said. “If we had an enormous flux of cases, and we were straining our residence halls, we’d have to look at alternatives. And that could include asking people to isolate in place or quarantine in place. It could include asking folks to go home to isolate and quarantine if they can. Or it can include looking for alternative spaces.” 

Ice said the last option is very difficult. She said it has been explored in the past to ask hotels to act as quarantine and isolation spaces and that “most hotels are not willing to do that.” 

The Athens NEWS reported Tuesday that the university moved members of the Ohio U basketball team into the Fairfield Inn on East State Street. According to the Athens NEWS, the cost for hotel expenses comes from the Inter-Collegiate Athletics budget. 

“As a temporary measure, basketball student-athletes living in university residence halls were moved (to a hotel) to help mitigate the risk of disease during their season,” Ohio U spokesperson Carly Leatherwood said in an email to the Athens NEWS. “It is important to note these student-athletes have been relatively isolated and already following COVID protocols during the winter break, and we’re hoping to keep them on track through the influx of cases we are seeing.”

Testing 

When WOUB News Assignment Editor David Forster told Ice that he experienced a five day wait to get back COVID-19 test results though Vault, and claimed that several others shared similar experiences, Ice told reporters that UPS “misplaced some of our samples.”

Ice blamed delays on the tests having to be sent to New Jersey, dealing with shipping disruptions “like the whole country is right now,” as well as bad weather. 

“That’s not normal for us,” Ice said. “And in fact, the results have been coming back in less than 48 hours since that time.” 

Positivity rates, surge in cases

According to the Ohio U COVID-19 Dashboard, as of Jan. 15, the seven day average for the positivity rate stood at 10.7%. 

“I think this is a correction,” Ice said. “What I mean by correction is we tested a whole bunch of people before they came back to campus, or they reported shortly there, and some of those folks were actively infectious, some of those folks were probably picking up an infection that happened a couple weeks ago and so forth, so I think that it’ll be interesting to see where we go from here.”

There is a struggle to keep up with demand, according to Ice. 

“We’ve instituted surge processing so we’ve been in the process of hiring additional part-time folks. We’ve asked some of our part-time folks to do more full-time hours. We are sort of bringing it down to the essentials to help students, faculty and staff through the processes seamlessly as possible,” Ice said. “We certainly know we have high call volumes, high emails and so forth, and we’re struggling to keep up with all of that demand.” 

Ice is pleased with the current vaccination rates at Ohio U.

“The vaccination rates still look great,” Ice said. “This will help us get this disease under control.” 

According to the COVID-19 Dashboard, the overall vaccination rate for students and employees at the Athens campus is 91%, with just over 1,500 exemptions.