Cornell University in Ithaca, New York shut down its campus on Tuesday after testing showed evidence of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus on campus on Monday.
The school is facing a spike in cases among the student body. As of Tuesday afternoon, the campus reported 469 active student cases among an enrollment of around 15,000. Last week the school saw 883 student cases, which comes to a rate of about 840 cases per day per 100,000 students (a common measure of cases).
Numbers spiked significantly beginning December 11 and have remained high.
The campus shutdown comes just days before the end of the semester, and includes moving all final exams to an online format as of Tuesday, December 14, and canceling December’s graduation ceremonies.
The shutdown also impacts athletics. Sunday’s men’s and women’s home basketball games will “not take place on campus,” a spokesperson told SwimSwam, though competition is expected to resume for all athletics teams on Monday.
Cornell’s swimming and diving programs don’t have another meet until both teams travel to face Ivy League opponents Yale on January 14 and 15, but practices are still being impacted in the meantime.
“We…are awaiting word on resumption of practice opportunities in the next few days,” the spokesperson said.
“While there is still much that is not known about the Omicron variant, it appears to be significantly more transmissible than Delta and other variants,” a statement from Cornell president Martha E. Pollack reads. “There is some evidence (though far from certain) that it generally causes milder cases, particularly among vaccinated individuals. However, when you have high transmissibility, you’re going to have very high numbers of cases, and so even with lower rates of serious illness, outbreaks must be taken seriously.”
Cornell has a 97% vaccination rate and requires vaccines for students on campus except in rare circumstances. It also requires testing before students leave school to return home.
Cornell, like all Ivy League schools, didn’t participate in varsity athletics in the 2020-2021 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Cornell women finished 8th out of 8 teams at the last championships, which were in February 2020. The men’s team were 6th out of 8 teams in 2020, placing ahead of Penn and Dartmouth.
More from Cornell President Pollack:
“While I want to provide reassurance that, to date, we have not seen severe illness in any of our infected students, we do have a role to play in reducing the spread of the disease in the broader community. The fact that we have not experienced severe illness among our student population may lead some to ask why we are imposing such serious steps. So let me share the underlying math: Consider one variant, let’s call it A, in which each person infects two others on average, and which causes serious illness in 1% of cases. After ten iterations of transmission, you’ll have about 1,000 cases, and 10 instances of serious illness. Now consider variant B, which is twice as infectious, so each person infects four others on average, but which causes serious illness only one-tenth as often, i.e., in only 0.1% of cases. Unchecked, over the same ten iterations of transmission, with variant B you’ll have more than a million cases, and about 1,000 individuals with serious illness. Of course, other factors come into play, including the fact that the virus will “run out” of people to infect in any community, but the point is that higher transmissibility leads to exponential growth, which outweighs the linear decrease in percent of severe cases. To avoid this type of situation, it is imperative not to let such infections run unchecked, but to take steps that limit transmission.
“It is obviously extremely dispiriting to have to take these steps. However, since the start of the pandemic, our commitment has been to follow the science and do all we can to protect the health of our faculty, staff, and students.”
I think it started at the Theta Formal right after Thanksgiving Break. Sucks. Good luck Big Red, stay away from the Omni!
I’m sorry but this is BS. As a fully-vaccinated person who was in support of initial lockdowns, this is absurd. It is not any worse than the other variants, and we can’t keep doing this every time a new variant comes out. There WILL be new variants, forever. It’s not going to be eradicated. We need to start moving on. I feel so bad for the December graduates.
When I was in college we had to cancel classes for a couple of days because of a flu outbreak. And that was almost 100 years after the flu pandemic! How ridiculous!
This is not a reaction to the variant, it’s a reaction to a disease outbreak on campus. As ACC said, universities respond to flu and norovirus outbreaks regularly.
No, they don’t. I go to a more prestigious university than Cornell and we had over 100 cases of the flu within a span of one week. No one was quarantined for the flu and classes carried on. As someone who DOES, in fact, understand the science behind both viruses, I am not saying the flu is worse than COVID. However, our entire campus population is vaccinated and therefore not at risk of developing severe symptoms. Same for Cornell. Therefore, my point stands: we need to move on because this virus is not going anywhere. Vaccines work, and everyone should get it, so beyond that we need to move on.
This argument holds up once 100% of the population has access to vaccines. Currently, children 5 and under are unable to get vaccinated and many families are still living very cautiously. Cornell’s decision to send students home was partly about the students, but arguably more about preventing community spread off campus. Until everyone in the population has access to vaccines, it is the responsible thing to do.
I’m sure people will argue that most children will have mild cases, however long term affects are still unknown and many families would prefer their children do not get Covid before they can receive a vaccine and have some immunity.
Yea take your opinion with your education from a “more prestigious university” somewhere else coward
Kma bud.
@CAASwammwer what does “I go to a more prestigious university than Cornell” have to do with making your point?
The point was that the “elite” universities have very similar COVID-19 policies. That was all I meant by that.
The problem with the ‘elite universities’ is that they produce people like swimfan27
OMG… “a more prestigious university than Cornell…” That made my day.
The shutdown also impacts athletics. Sunday’s men’s and women’s home basketball games will “not take place on campus,” a spokesperson told SwimSwam, though competition is expected to resume for all athletics teams on Monday.
Sunday BAD, Monday GOOD – Not Science
I think that it’s more about buying them time to get a plan in place to move forward than it is the expectation that the virus will turn off on Monday.
So, for example, it keeps the team from having to go into a game on a week of no practice. It gives the school time to come up with a testing protocol. It also allows the student-athletes to get through finals. It gives opposing teams time to come up with a plan to keep their athletes safe.
Repeat last years protocol for a few weeks. Done.
The Ivy League didn’t have competitions last year.
exactly. done.
My interpretation of that sentence was that competition on campus this weekend is cancelled and competition will resume next week but not necessarily on campus. If you have a major campus outbreak and you want to avoid spreading it off campus, isolating and testing a limited number of players and staff prior to them leaving campus to play at another location is less likely to spread your campus outbreak than inviting outside people onto your campus.
The Cornell Men finished 6th in 2020. Ahead of Penn and Dartmouth.
I know there’s a lot of campuses and teams that are only requiring testing of unvaccinated students/athletes. Are there schools testing the vaccinated as well for breakthrough cases?
They’re doing scheduled testing for unvaccinated and random surveillance testing for vaccinated. So they aren’t tested as regularly, but are still tested at random.
Cornell tests everyone (students, faculty and staff) every week (vaccinated or not) at least once, that’s why there are so many cases. Cornell’s vaccination rate is 97%
On the one hand, yes.
On the other hand, this makes a rise in the test positivity rate more significant (they’re saying now 3%).
I think if the school could keep the students isolated from the public, which might have higher risk levels and lower vaccination rates, they’d probably be less likely to shut things down.
It’s kind of crazy how quickly the Omicron variant seems to be able to spread. And because we’ve only known about it for like 3 weeks, it’s hard to say how deadly it is. I definitely understand that this is a hard decision but it seems to me they’re making the right one.