Nationwide, colleges are responding to Corona Virus in a variety of different ways but researchers have picked up on one strategy that almost all colleges have adopted in preparation for the school year. Running classes through fall break and getting students home before the annual flu hits.
South Carolina, Notre Dame, Rice, and Creighton are a few colleges among many that have adorned these measures in an attempt to “avoid a ‘second wave’ of coronavirus infections expected to emerge in late fall.” Other colleges are following suit; doing their best to dodge flu season. David W. Leebron, president of Rice University states, “We don’t know if the second wave will be weaker or stronger, but there’s a significant risk that [COVID-19 cases] will resurge in the winter.”
Peter Palese, a flu researcher, professor, and chairmen of the microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York conducted a study of why influenza likes the cold based off of a paper released during the 1918 flu pandemic. His findings were that the influenza virus stays stable in the air for longer when the air is not moist or hot. This isn’t recent news, the study came out in 2007 but it can tell us something about what this year’s flu season might look like.
The 2020 winter is predicted to be a light one but that doesn’t mean we should be any less careful with COVID precautions. Many researchers, medical professionals, and health workers on the frontlines anticipate that COVID-19 won’t be showing us any mercy this winter… But then again, there is always the possibility that global warming will do us a favor by granting us the warmest winter we’ve had so there’ll be no surge in cases!
All jokes aside, the safest measure that colleges can take right now is suspending fall break and returning students to their homes before flu season hits too hard. With everyone home during this time, students will be at a much lower risk of transmitting the disease.