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Soon, college students will be returning home from campuses for holiday breaks. What steps can parents take to keep everyone in the household safe from COVID-19?
This response readily acknowledges that much of the transmission of COVID-19 across many college campuses have been “silent”, meaning that asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic infections among young adults has been relatively common. Many campuses have employed extraordinary efforts to try and minimize COVID-19 infections on campus by limiting the density of classes, making dormitories single-occupancy only, limiting the in-dining experience, enforcing universal mask wearing, using routine testing, etc. However, it appears that college outbreaks have occurred in many instances and these are commonly related to off-campus risks, such as group gatherings off campus, bars, restaurants, Greek-life activities, etc.
Therefore, when the college student returns home for the holidays there are a number of considerations. If there are any persons in the household that have the risk factors for severe disease (see the CDC’s website for those risk factors; https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/index.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fneed-extra-precautions%2Fpeople-at-increased-risk.html), then I suggest being on the very aggressive side of these options.
One way to approach the situation is to assume that your college student IS INFECTED, unless otherwise proven. So, you may want to require a test prior to returning home--a negative test within 72 hours of coming home or else they are sequestered in the basement or some other part of the house which is a formal quarantine space (not all families have the luxury of this kind of space to be able to quarantine the college student).
There should be ready awareness of any symptoms from the college student with or without the testing prior to coming home.
