With covid surging, many college students are confined in isolation and quarantine

With a highly transmissible new variant, college officials are scrambling to separate infected or exposed students from others

January 6, 2022

Oscar Lloyd was eating with some friends in a lounge at his college dorm when he got the email: He had tested positive for the coronavirus, and he had two hours to pack and move into isolation housing for 10 days, the Washington Post reports.

“Everyone went into a frenzy,” the first-year student from Virginia said. He was the second person in his group of friends at Columbia University to test positive. He called his parents and some other friends he had just been with. His roommate called his parents. Several people called to get flights moved up to the following day — it was just days before the end of the semester, and they didn’t want to get stuck on campus in quarantine.

Thousands of college students ended 2021 and will begin 2022 in isolation and quarantine as the omicron variant surges in the United States. For school administrators, the sudden outbreaks sparked logistical scrambles to get students swiftly and safely housed away from others.

Some of the first warning signs that the pandemic had changed, again, were on university campuses: Cases spiked last monthand many colleges announced they would hold finals online, extend the winter break, or resume classes virtually. In some cases those decisions were driven by the limitations on housing available to separate infected and potentially exposed students from others on campus — the virus was spreading so rapidly that models predicted broadening waves of exposures.