Modeling for COVID-19 college reopening decisions: Cornell, a case study

Abstract

Decisions surrounding how to safely reopen universities directly impact 7% of the US population (students, staff) and indirectly impact tens of millions more (families, communities). After witnessing large COVID-19 outbreaks among students from August 2020 to the present, universities want to provide safety while minimizing social and financial costs, despite uncertainty about vaccine hesitancy, vaccine efficacy, more transmissible variants with the potential for immune escape, and community prevalence. When the Delta variant is dominant, we find substantial risk reduction in moving student populations from mostly (75%) to fully (100%) vaccinated, in testing vaccinated students once per week even when all students are vaccinated, and in more frequent testing targeted to the most social groups of students.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jan 04, 2022
Source ID
10.1073/pnas.2112532119

Entities

People

  • Alyf Janmohamed
  • Brian Liu
  • David Shmoys
  • J. Massey Cashore
  • Jiayue Wan
  • Ning Duan
  • Peter Frazier
  • Shane Henderson
  • Yujia Zhang

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research
  • Cornell University
  • National Science Foundation

Tags

Readers

  • Infectious Disease/Epidemiology
  • Psychometric Testing or Psychological Assessment.
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology