LAFAYETTE – When asked what advice he’d give to Greater Lafayette parents teetering between sending kids back into classrooms or opting for remote learning to start the school year, Tippecanoe County’s health officer last week didn’t give direct guidance one way or the other as a coronavirus pandemic continues.
Dr. Jeremy Adler, health officer for Tippecanoe County Health Department, said Gov. Eric Holcomb’s recent mask mandate – which included students in third-grade and above – “helps greatly” and gives him more confidence in reopening plans for Greater Lafayette’s school systems.
“That is a step in the right direction,” Adler said last week, during one of the health department’s updates on local efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Adler said districts were “working hard at rearranging their schools and their classrooms and everything else to promote social distancing.” Greater Lafayette’s districts – Tippecanoe School Corp., Lafayette School Corp. and West Lafayette Community School Corp. – plan to reopen later in August and each has offered options for remote learning for parents who want to keep their children at home.
“There’s always going to be a concern if you’re bringing large groups of people together, whether they’re students or nonstudents into a building, for a long period of time, day after day,” Adler said.
But he said that for families, whether to opt for remote learning or in-classroom settings was a personal decision. He said that included parents taking into consideration the health status of their children and family members those students would come in contact with at home.
More: Coronavirus: Tippecanoe posts second largest daily gain, with 32; 125 cases in past week
“They need to decide as a family what works best for your particular situation,” Adler said.
Shutting down schools, again? Criteria not clear
With the first student and staff cases of coronavirus being reported as the first Indiana public schools reopened late last week, how about this: What would it take for Tippecanoe County health officials to call to close classrooms and move back to remote learning for all schools, as happened in March when coronavirus cases first emerged?
The state has no set guideline on that, based on comments last week from Dr. Kristina Box, commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health.
For Tippecanoe County, Adler said that would depend on whether the community sees a significant surge in COVID-19 cases.
More: Purdue athletics reports 35 total positive COVID-19 cases
“I don’t have a specific number or a specific percentage I can put to that,” Adler said.
Adler said the county would continue to look at trends in the number of new cases, the percentage of those testing positive for COVID-19, emergency room visits and hospitalizations, among other factors.
More: The state has no requirements for reopening plans. How will we know schools are safe?
He said he thought that if that surge came, Tippecanoe County would not be alone and that it would be happening in other counties – “possibly across the entire state” – as well.
How about at Purdue?
A similar question has been rattling around at Purdue, which is preparing to reopen the West Lafayette campus to as many as 40,000 students by the time fall semester classes start Aug. 24.
The Protect Purdue Plan includes a testing protocol that requires students to show a negative result before they may move into a campus residence hall or attend their first class. Those tests, administered either through the Protect Purdue Health Center near campus or at home through a third-party administrator, started last week, according to Purdue officials.
More: Faculty: Protect Purdue leader set terrible example for students by hosting wedding reception during pandemic
In July, three of the first 504 students on campus for a pair of summer programs for incoming students tested positive for COVID-19 and were isolated in campus housing, according to the Protect Purdue Health Center. And on Friday, the Purdue athletic department reported that 35 people had tested positive among the 573 student-athletes, coaches and staff being monitored since June 8. Of those, the athletic department reported, eight cases were active, as of Friday.
Purdue Provost Jay Akridge has been hosting weekly, campuswide Q&A sessions to address concerns about Purdue’s reopening strategy.
More: Tighter restrictions on bars as Purdue reopens? Could happen, health official says
Last week, Akridge said it was among the more frequent questions the Protect Purdue Implementation Team was receiving: Does Purdue have metrics or benchmarks – including the percentage of the student body testing positive – for going back to purely online instruction during the fall semester?
Akridge said Purdue’s medical advisory team was still working on that.
David Broecker, chief innovation officer for Purdue Research Foundation and head of the Protect Purdue Implementation Team, said contingency plans were being built around potential surges on campus and in the community.
“We don’t necessarily have any hard and fast rules right now about ‘X percent’ is going to trigger some action,” Broecker said. “You need to look holistically, not only at what’s happening from an infection rate across the community, but our ability to test as well as then to isolate and work with local hospitals and other clinical providers.”
More: Coronavirus: Purdue reveals 3 students test positive, accounting for less than 1% of first group on campus
He said a key for Purdue was having its own testing capacity on campus – headed by a lab at the Indiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, which is based at Purdue. Broecker said the goal is to be able to get test results in 24 hours to know whether students, faculty or staff who test positive need to be isolated for extended periods. Purdue also is setting up its own contact tracing when students, faculty or staff test positive during the semester.
Purdue plans to create an online dashboard, of some sort, in August that tracks testing and cases among the general student body, Akridge said.
As for shutting down campus, Broecker said the Protect Purdue Plan would follow trends in overall infection rate on daily basis, positivity rates for seven-day moving averages, watch how much testing the university is doing, track available isolation space on and near campus, what rapid contact tracing is showing and working with local health officials on hospital capacity, among other factors.
“I feel we have all the pieces and components identified,” Broecker said.
A charge for the community
Adler continued to say last week that he thought the Protect Purdue Plan was a good one. Though, Adler said he was concerned about how plans laid out for on-campus measures – mandatory masks, constant reminders on social distancing and hand washing, an emphasis on staying home when symptoms show up – would translate for students and staff off-campus.
More: Coronavirus: How are Greater Lafayette teachers preparing for a return to the classroom?
“It’s going to take a lot of education and reinforcement of these measures that all of us, students and nonstudents alike, need to continue practicing, so we can really keep our COVID-19 situation under control,” Adler said.
Dr. Jim Bien, chief medical officer at IU Health Arnett Hospital in Lafayette, echoed that.
Bien made a case that it was important for schools – particularly in K-12 grades – to reopen and for kids to get to go.
“There are benefits beyond education that accrue to everyone,” Bien said. “To me, that is the message. That in reality, if we want it to work for our kids and for our families, as a community, we have to be all in on doing everything else we can to keep things under control.”
Bien said that meant getting with basic hygiene guidelines – complying with mask requirements, social distancing, washing hands and the like – and other recommendations to curb COVID-19.
More: How will Purdue reopen in the fall? Here’s the Protect Purdue Plan
“The basic stuff, we all have to be on board for,” Bien said.
“Or the plans Purdue is setting up, the plans Tippecanoe County schools, Lafayette schools, West Lafayette schools are setting up are not going to be sustainable, because the disease burden will increase to the point where we’ll have to pull the plug on those kinds of gatherings,” Bien said. “I think that would be a crime and a huge shame. We should be compromising other things in our community before we compromise our schools. We need to go all in on these other restrictions if we want the schools to stay open.”
Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.
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