Isolation, Contact Tracing and the New Covid Reality

New spring, new term, new Covid policies — you know the drill. As of this semester, Harvard, in a sharp departure from previous terms, will no longer provide isolation housing for infected students or coordinate a broad-based contact tracing effort. Instead, students who test positive for Covid-19 will be required to self-isolate in their rooms and notify their close-contacts from their newfound, in-house confinement.

While initially shocking, we consider the University’s shift to be in accordance with the pandemic’s own shifting nature. After almost 400 million cases worldwide, Covid-19 now seems on track to become an endemic threat: a constant virological presence in our communities. Endemics vary in location and severity, spanning everything from malaria to the simple common flu; they are public health threats that, while challenging to society in their own right, are no longer characterized by the disruptiveness and unpredictability that defined the first few waves of Covid-19. If present trends continue, we will eventually have to adapt and coexist with Covid.

Against this epidemiological backdrop, Harvard’s latest policy choices start to make sense. That, too, is not surprising — since the dawn of the pandemic, the administration’s approach has been vindicated time and time again. Harvard, an institution in communication with epidemiologists from all over the world, has generally been right in the past in crafting Covid-19 policies, erring, if anything, on the side of caution. Case counts on campus have, in fact, remained commendably low throughout the course of the pandemic. As Covid-19 propagates in the form of the more transmissible but less severe Omicron variant, a shift in policy must accompany the shift in the nature of the virus. The University must strike a balance between the logistically feasible and epidemiologically ideal.

That’s not to say that Harvard should abandon containment efforts altogether. The University’s decision to close dining halls for the first two weeks and retain indoor masking, for example, reflects its enduring and laudable commitment to student safety, more lenient isolation policies notwithstanding. The question, then, is whether those efforts will be enough, particularly for those members of our community who are most likely to suffer severely from a Covid-19 infection. Will this change in policy unduly endanger our immunocompromised peers, elderly professors and Harvard University Dining Services staff, and any other Harvard affiliates at elevated risk? The answer seems, at best, uncertain.

As such, Harvard should provide more assurance that immunocompromised students will have access to the College’s limited alternative housing. Isolating in place with a Covid-positive roommate places all of us in harm’s way; for the immunocompromised, the potential risks can be terrifyingly higher. While eligible students with elevated risk for complications are said to have priority for these slots, Harvard must prove in its execution that these students will, in fact, receive fair treatment and priority access.

Moreover, with an inflated number of cases on campus, it is imperative that infected students have access to structured academic support. A positive result should not cause a student to fall behind academically at a university that has an abundance of resources available. There must be a systematized way to ensure access to classes outside of shared PowerPoint presentations and iPhone recordings.

Above all, as the University continues to make changes to Covid-19 protocols, their execution of said policies must be efficient. This is not the time for vague emails about “troubling and unprecedented times.” Harvard has a responsibility to clearly communicate why decisions are being made while acknowledging the efficacy and potential downfalls of the measures they put in place. This may include the recognition that they don’t always know precisely what is best.

Crucially, this burden does not fall entirely on the University: We must hold ourselves individually accountable. Even as Harvard’s isolation policy changes in line with Covid-19, we must keep up with common-sense mitigation strategies like KN95 masks and stringent testing enforcement in order to keep our community safe. Given the most recent changes in contact-tracing policy, students who test positive have an obligation to personally notify everyone they may have exposed to Covid-19. This action is not only quick, intuitive, and necessary — it’s also, quite simply, the right thing to do.

The Covid-19 pandemic has placed a series of unexpected hurdles in the path of everyone for nearly two full years, and in large part, we — students, faculty, and administrators alike — have adjusted accordingly. As we look ahead to a spring semester where the prominence of Covid-19 remains an unfortunate reality, we must all continue to play our part to ensure the success of Harvard’s ever-shifting policies and to keep one another safe.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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