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Return to Campus Webinar: Final update and our testing/tracing plan

In the sixth and final Return to Campus webinar, held on Aug. 20, 2020, President Ruth Watkins and other senior leaders gave a final update on campus operations, while Dr. Richard Orlandi and Dr. Sharon Talboys discussed details of the U’s testing and tracing plan.

In the sixth and final Return to Campus webinar, held on Aug. 20, 2020, President Ruth Watkins and other senior leaders gave a final update on campus operations, while Dr. Richard Orlandi and Dr. Sharon Talboys discussed details of the U's testing and tracing plan.

University leaders in attendance:
  • President Ruth Watkins
  • Dr. Michael Good, senior vice president for Health Sciences
  • Dr. Dan Reed, senior vice president for Academic Affairs
  • Dr. Richard Orlandi, chief medical officer for University of Utah's Health Ambulatory Services
  • Dr. Sharon Talboys, public health professor, University of Utah School of Medicine
  • Lori McDonald, vice president for Student Affairs
  • Dr. Steven Lacey, chair of the Department of Public Health, University of Utah School of Medicine

Webinar transcript

Chris Nelson

Good afternoon, everybody. I want to welcome everyone to the Return to Campus Webinar No. 6. This is our final update. And today, we're going to focus on the U’s testing and tracing plan. I want to thank everybody who has participated in other sessions. And again, all of these have been archived and you can get the latest information on the coronavirus plan at the University of Utah campus at coronavirus.utah.edu.

Today, we're joined by President Ruth Watkins. We'll also hear from Senior Vice President for Health Sciences Dr. Michael Good, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Dan Reed, Dr. Richard Orlandi, who is the chief medical officer for University of Utah's Health ambulatory services, and Dr. Sharon Talboys, who is a public health professor in the university's medical school.

We're also joined by Dr. Lori McDonald, who is the vice president for Student Affairs and Dr. Steven Lacey, who is the chair of public health. We have Dr. McDonald and Dr. Lacey as guests in case questions come up later. And so with that, I'll turn it over to President Watkins.

President Ruth Watkins

Thanks so much, Chris. And thank you all for joining us this afternoon. I cannot say strongly enough how grateful I am for this campus and the way you have pulled together to creatively solve problems and prepare for Fall 2020 Semester. Our students, our faculty and our staff are to be credited.

Our goal now is to work together to stay together, and that will take all of us. That will take our faculty, our staff, our students and our behaviors to help us really support health and well-being. I know there are many unknowns and I know most of our community feels that it has never worked harder in such a climate of uncertainty. We see you, we are grateful for you. We appreciate all that hard work. I do have confidence in our ability to solve problems, to be flexible, to be nimble and to be adaptable as needed. And we know we are going to need those skills.

I do think we also have a lot of reason to be hopeful. We've taken many precautions as we've prepared, and of course, what happens off campus matters a great deal, too. It's going to take all of us following public health guidelines to keep our campus moving forward. We are so fortunate to have the expertise of a full academic medical center and our ARUP testing lab to help us along the way. A couple of words on some of the measures that we have taken. I want to comment specifically on affordability and stability for our students.

You may recall that in the spring semester, we had an approved tuition increase. We have made the decision not to implement that this fall. So tuition will be flat. Earlier this week, you may have seen an announcement that we will discount fall fees by 25%. That is designed to help our students be enrolled, stay enrolled and complete their degrees.

Many of the actions we are taking to promote safety and well-being on campus changed the way classes are delivered, but we are prioritizing those critical experiential learning opportunities that help everyone from our medical students to our undergraduates in the performing arts, have some of the experiences that they need to stay on track to graduate.

I'm really grateful for what you have all done and for all that is ahead. I think as One U, you've shown great resilience and a great spirit. And I look forward to the next phase. I'm going to pass to my colleague, Dr. Mike Good, who is going to talk a bit about our health status.

Dr. Mike Good

Thank you, President Watkins. And thank you all for joining today. I was going to offer just a few very brief updates on the state of the coronavirus in our community. Just a couple of slides very quickly.

We have over the past two to three weeks seen favorable trends in the state of Utah. We've, as you can see from this chart, reached a peak of over 13,000 individuals with active coronavirus in our state, a little over four out of every 1,000. Over the past few weeks, we've seen fewer symptomatic individuals and fewer individuals with active coronavirus infections. In fact, now the latest number I have, shows that for about every 1,000 individuals, approximately 2.6 have an active coronavirus infection. So through a variety of measures, the state has seen a decline in the number of individuals with active infections.

We also are seeing fewer individuals with flu symptoms present for testing and across all testing modalities, both symptomatic and asymptomatic. You can see that we're now many days having positive test rates around 8%, 8.5%, 9%, down from the 10, 11, 12, that we were seeing just a few weeks ago. Not where we still want to see that continue to decline further, but certainly, trends are in the correct direction. And then I always try to keep things in perspective. With this chart, it compares a seven-day average deaths if you will, from a number of things such as heart disease and cancer, but particularly, traffic accidents, strokes, suicides and then seasonal flus and pneumonias.

And you can see with the declining number of infections, the number of positive tests, you can see with this chart, for example, for a while, coronavirus was taking more lives than traffic accidents. And now, we've come back down below that on a seven-day average basis. So many things in our community are working together, as President Watkins said, to help keep this virus at a low level, and do everything we can to reduce its transmission from one individual to another.

One of the questions was about the metrics that we monitor, and that we focus heavily on metrics from our campus, from our university hospital, from our county, the Wasatch Front, why aren't we looking at the national scene because many of our students will be coming from these other areas? Suffice to say, I think the local metrics are the most important, but we do keep an eye on the national scene. One of the things that's challenging is coronavirus is a very regional geographic-centric illness with different communities being affected in different ways at different times.

This chart shows the number of new cases organized by state. We've all watched New York go both up and then down in its curve. Similarly, here in Utah, not the same magnitude, but headed the right way. At the moment, states like Missouri, Hawaii, Arkansas, Kansas, with increasing trends. So we do monitor the national trends and situation, but we do feel the local metrics are the ones that are having the greatest impact on us. And so we follow those most closely.

We believe the reason that we've seen these decline in infection rates is the ability to reliably wear face coverings, wash hands. We're learning to do a lot with six feet of distance between one another. And, of course, really important to stay away from others when you're feeling ill in any way. That's just a quick summary. I'm now going to lateral to Senior Vice President Dan Reed, and then we'll certainly look forward to the questions afterwards. Dr. Reed.

Dr. Dan Reed

Thanks, Mike. I want to echo what President Watkins said, and that's a huge thank you to everyone who's worked so hard on planning and preparations for the fall semester. It's a time of excitement when students are back with us. It's a new beginning and all of the pleasure that comes with that, but it's been due to a lot of hard work and planning by many people. And just a huge thank you for that.

But I want to echo a couple of other things to think about the fall semester and what it means. The priorities we've used to plan for what programs we would offer in-person are really focused on primarily three areas. One, for the students who are coming to the university for the first time to make sure that they have some in-person sense of the great thing that happens about being a University of Utah student. So some focus on in-person classes for those students. But then as President Watkins said, there's a whole wide range of things that a great public research university does to educate students that don't happen in a traditional lecture format.

And that's really the experiential education. It's everything from the professional schools and health, where training is important to student teachers, to social worker practicums, to architecture design studios, to music and art studios, to STEM-based laboratory instruction. That's a really critical part of education that simply can't be delivered in the same way online. And so we really want to preserve that experience. Then, of course, in the midst of all of this, we want to ensure that students graduate. And so making sure that those courses are available has been a big part of our planning.

But if you look at where we are in terms of the modalities of instruction delivery, in-person classes, it's under 25% of what we will be delivering this fall. And that includes those experiential activities I just described, in addition to some lectures for our first-year students. The other modalities include interactive video conference, IVC. You can think of that as what we're doing now, it's a live Zoom kind of meeting with a scheduled time and appointment. Online education, that's an asynchronous delivery mode. It builds on our long history of offering online education that can be scheduled on a particular day at a student's convenience. And in some cases where there's a hybrid of one of these modes or another.

So the majority of our classes will not be in-person, and that's really driven by insights from our public health experts, both in the state and on campus. And that leads me to the last thing I wanted to share, which is the evolving schedule for the fall semester. Early on, we looked at what we all know about flu season and high infection rates, and made a decision that given both the vice presidential debate that was going to take place that would require us to relinquish some real estate on campus, for security, that we would put that week all online. We also recognized that people scatter after Thanksgiving break and return, and that returning poses some health risk. So we early on made the decision that we would go online for all classes after Thanksgiving.

Further, public health modeling, using what's called a SEIR model. The whole notion there is modeling the various stages a population could be susceptible, exposed, infected or recovered, and drawing on data and modeling expertise in public health, one of the things that became clear is we could further reduce the probability of a spread of infection on campus by instituting a two-week trigger. If you think about the incubation period and the recovery periods, two weeks is a magic interval. And so given that we already had the fortuitous notion of a week that we're online for the VP debate, we simply added a week before that to give us a two-week interval that could be that public health circuit breaker.

So we move from start, next Monday, to going all online for two weeks returning to that mix of modalities, and then going all online at the end of the semester after Thanksgiving. So we look forward to the fall. I just want to, again, say thank you to all of you, faculty, staff, and students that worked so hard to get us to this point. We're looking forward to the fall. And with that, I'm going to hand the floor over to my colleague, Dr. Richard Orlandi.

Dr. Richard Orlandi

Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you here today. I just briefly want to let you know how we're handling testing, and then we can cover more in the questions.

We're leveraging the experience we've had at University of Utah Health for the last five months that we've been doing testing for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. So we're going to be leveraging all of that. We have been doing that already. We've already begun our testing and we'll continue through that. Most of our students will be off campus when they realize they need a test, and that's true of our faculty and staff as well. And so we'll be partnering with organizations throughout the community, as well as having testing capability on campus as well. We're looking forward to that and making sure that we can do testing for both symptomatic students, contact tracing for those who need it, the testing for that, and a number of other options that we're looking at.

The one thing that's important to understand with testing is it's very, very rapidly developing. And so what we institute at the beginning of the semester next week will probably look different than what we're going to be doing later in the semester. That will continue to evolve and we will continue to get that information out, but please don't get emotionally tied to anything that we're doing on Day One because it will change. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Sharon Talboys.

Dr. Sharon Talboys

Thank you, Dr. Orlandi. Good afternoon, and it's my pleasure to be here with you to talk about the University of Utah's contact tracing plan for its safe return to campus. I oversee a team of contact tracers for the university that are working seven days a week, and we've been rapidly preparing. So I'm going to pull up some slides and give an overview of our current plan.

Before we jump into the actual plan, I'd like to first share with you what contact tracing is, the definition we're working with. This is simply letting people know that they may have been exposed to COVID-19 and they should monitor themselves for signs of COVID. It's also helping people who may have been exposed know how to get testing. So we'll give you some ways that you can get that information if that's you. We also ask people to self-isolate if they have COVID or to self-quarantine.

These two terms are important. Isolation is what we ask people to do if they're actually sick and quarantine is what we ask people who have been in close contact or have been exposed but are not yet sick or having symptoms. Those timeframes will vary depending on the case and the time of exposure, and that's why it's important that our contact tracing team gets in touch with you. We can talk through these types of issues to help guide them.

One of the things we'll talk about a lot when we contact someone who might've been exposed, we use the definition ‘anyone you have been with for 15 minutes or longer within six feet.’ That's about two arm lengths, and it's with or without a mask. And we also look at timeframe to the known or probable cause exposure. Certainly, if we have a confirmed test, but also if there's a known link in someone who's symptomatic, we want to look two days before that person began their symptoms or received a positive test and we'll provide guidance.

Another way to be in close contact is even if you have a brief interaction where there's bodily secretions shared. So this could be hugging, kissing, handshaking, or being coughed or sneezed on by someone who's got symptoms. There are other considerations, especially when we think about campus. And I know people are concerned about classrooms? What about my office where I work? So we'll also talk with people about what is the additional risk with a case in an in-person class? Even if you are six feet apart and masked, it doesn't mean there's zero risk, so we would further evaluate to see if we need to contact more people than just that strict operational definition.

It's also important for you to know who does contact tracing. The jurisdictional lead for contact tracing is the local health department. For many people at the University of Utah, that's Salt Lake County Health Department, but there's also surrounding health departments where our campus community lives and works. But due to the magnitude of COVID-19, health departments have been working with schools, businesses, healthcare settings like ourselves, and employers to assist with this effort. And that's where our University of Utah contact tracing team comes in.

I'm going to walk you through the plan. And the first question is, how do we know about exposures? If you look to the left column, there's a few ways that our team will learn about exposures. Number one, the health department receives case reports through routine public health reporting. So they get the laboratory reports, they get the healthcare reports of positive cases. We also have campus testing. So those positive cases come directly to our team and are also shared with the health department. And we also can hear from you.

Even if you don't have a positive test yet, but you're experiencing symptoms, you think you may have had an exposure, we have an online self-report form at coronavirus.utah.edu. Please go ahead and fill that out. If you work or have a classmate that has concerns, you could guide them to this website as well to share their concerns and our contact tracing team will reach out to that person if they think they've been exposed, or if they're experiencing symptoms. Or if they need to figure out how to go get testing, or if they should get testing. I'm going to walk through this middle piece here, after campus testing.

Positives come to our contact tracing team. I also have arrows here towards the health departments. Contact tracing doesn't begin until the case investigation has been initiated. And a case investigation is where we or the health department, and oftentimes both, call the person who tested positive. And that's where they start gathering information of close contacts. So we interview the person, gather names and phone numbers of anyone who meets that close-contact definition and we work very close together with the local health departments. Sometimes they have trouble sometimes contacting people. So if we can reach out to our community members on campus, we will reach out to those people on the contact list that are related to campus. So students, faculty, staff. We will help the health department contact those people and advise.

This last box here where you probably have a lot of questions is, what happens if I get called either by the health department or by the university contact tracing team? So what we do when we work with the health department? We'll interview and focus on campus-related questions like, where have you been on campus? When were you there? How long were you there? What buildings were you in? And this triggers a series of potential responses by our team. Certainly, we activate locations, the environmental team to do environmental cleaning when indicated. We work with the registrar's office to identify class rosters and inform the faculty and students, and any staff that have been in the class, we'll talk about that in a moment, and workplaces. So within your building, within your department unit. We have protocols to notify people in charge there, so that we can get advisories out to people who may need just advisory information. They're not deemed a close contact. Or just an advisory that they've been in a class, or probably not a close contact.

So, how will you be notified if No. 1, if you have symptoms or exposures and self-report? Our team will call you. And if you test positive through campus testing, you'll also be contacted by our team. If you're identified as a close contact through contact tracing, for example, the person above lists you as a close contact, you'll also be contacted by our UU contact tracing team. That is, if you're a campus community member. And you may also be contacted by the health department.

If you are in a classroom with a confirmed case, this is for faculty, staff and students, you'll be contacted by our team. We'll interview the person who's ill, and we'll also interview the faculty member and find out more about the environment, and consult with our environmental team and issue appropriate advisories to the class through our unit. Similarly, for workplace settings, not a classroom case, but maybe a group of offices. So this will depend on level of contact and environmental assessment. And we will notify leadership in that area of the building, if warranted, to trigger notification for people in that area.

And then lastly, I have some slides about what can you do to support contact tracing efforts? Number one is to be aware of your close contacts. So think of that definition I gave you and think about, who were my close contacts in the past seven days? I saw some questions about should we keep a journal of this? Sure, that would be terrific. I'm primarily looking at ways to identify close contacts, their phone numbers or emails, any way we can get in touch with them. Also, be sure to answer your phone if you don't recognize the number. It might be us or it might be the health department.

As always, wear face coverings, physically distance, continue good hygiene, hand washing and hand sanitizing. Monitor your health. Certainly, stay at home if you have any symptoms of COVID, and you can advise others who have questions and you know this information. If they need to get tested or have questions about how to access testing, they can call the COVID Hotline. And again, if you think you've been exposed or are experiencing symptoms, or you've had a positive test, please fill out the campus self-reporting form and our team will follow up with you.

Chris Nelson

Great. Thank you, Dr. Talboys. We have lots of great questions. We're closing in on half an hour, so I'm going to see if we can just go a little bit longer. So Shawn, let's keep this rolling. We'll give it another 10, 15 minutes if that's all right.

My takeaway and summarizing some of these questions, Dr. Talboys, Dr. Orlandi, the most important thing you can do is that self-report form, it sounds like. If you've gone in for a test, if you've got symptoms, you go and then self-report. Would you agree?

Dr. Sharon Talboys

Yes, absolutely.

Chris Nelson

And then, if in doubt, Dr. Orlandi, the best number to call is the hotline for healthcare testing, which is on the coronavirus site?

Dr. Richard Orlandi

That's correct. 801-587-0712. That number is very prominently displayed at coronavirus.utah.edu.

Chris Nelson

Again, just breaking it down to the most simple points, so if you're a faculty or staff member who's not been on campus and you're working remotely, Dr. Orlandi, the best way to go get tested is to call that number, talk to somebody and then to find the nearest location?

Dr. Richard Orlandi

That's correct. That's the same number we're using for the entire community. We encourage people to speak with their healthcare provider, but if they're not able to get ahold of him or her, or want to talk to somebody else, we're happy to provide that service to them. And they can call that same number, Chris.

Chris Nelson

And then Dr. McDonald, Dr. Orlandi, if I'm a student living in Housing & Residential Education, walk through that process for us.

Dr. Richard Orlandi

Sure. We're happy to do that. Is that okay with you? Okay. A student living in our dormitory facilities, again, would call that same phone number. They will be directed, especially if they don't have a car or wish to test on campus, we have a testing site that will be available just outside of the Student Health Center in our Madsen Health Building starting on Monday. They can be directed there and have the testing performed there.

Dr. Lori McDonald

And with that, contact tracing support will be offered from housing and residential education staff. If a student needs to isolate, having tested positive, or if they need to quarantine, having been in close contact with someone who has, the Housing & Residential Education staff will work with them for things like meal delivery, making sure they have all the supplies and supports they need in their living facility.

And I would note that our students who are living off campus that contact tracing will also be asking about, do they have the supports they need? Do they have resources for how to quarantine appropriately? And so they will be given resources to utilize even off campus. But for on campus, our Housing & Residential Education staff will provide that. Thank you.

Chris Nelson

A lot of questions about on-campus testing for faculty and staff. I think we go back to our core principles and maybe it's for Dr. Reed, we respectfully don't want you coming to campus if you're exhibiting signs. How would you react to a faculty or staff member who says, "Hey, I'm not feeling well. What do I need to do?"

Dr. Dan Reed

Well, the most important thing is stay home and isolate. But then the same guidance applies as for our students. If you think you're exhibiting symptoms, call and follow the guidance. But be safe and I hope let us work together to make sure that those folks who are on campus, who are healthy can continue to do their jobs and follow up accordingly in your case.

Chris Nelson

Dr. Reed and Dr. Talboys, since you've got the floor, we've had a number of questions about mobile phone tracking different apps. Where are we at with using a single app or any type of mobile device for that?

Dr. Dan Reed

Well, I'd be happy to start. One of the things to remember, and Dr. Orlandi said this in a broad context, this landscape is evolving incredibly rapidly, both on testing methodologies and a whole variety of experiences as we both learn ourselves but learn from our peer institutions.

We are working on a mobile app that actually an extension of the existing U Mobile app that you can download from the app store. That will be an information source that faculty, staff and students can download. It will share some information about this current state of campus. Also, a means to self-report, but also some health check-up information. So look for that sometime during the next month.

Chris Nelson

Dr. Talboys, anything to add to that?

Dr. Sharon Talboys

Just that there are mobile apps out there for people to do self-monitoring. We're not formally using an app for contact tracing, but certainly, there are tools out there you can use to monitor your symptoms.

Chris Nelson

Well, one of the things people have noticed is on the previous coronavirus site, before we updated it a few weeks ago, we were posting the running total of positive cases. People will notice if you go to the new site, that information has been taken down. I do want to assure everybody that information will go back up. I know we're working with the administration, with our public health experts, on the most accurate, actionable information to present.

So it's not a conspiracy to not share that information, but what's the best way to do it? Again, when we were completely online, we didn't have the students on campus. Now that we're moving back into that, we want to make sure that information is correct. President Watkins, anything you want to add to that?

President Watkins

Oh, I think that's perfect. Just watch coronavirus.utah.edu for the most updated information, and we are working on integrating that to provide it in a clear and understandable and actionable manner.

Chris Nelson

So President, this is on the site but just the question came and maybe you could reiterate. What are those metrics we're watching? We've watched these other schools get off to a rough start. So what is your administration looking at as factors that might trigger re-evaluating where we're at?

President Watkins

There are a number of metrics that matter. Probably, one of the most important is looking at infection transmission rate. That's been going the right direction for Utah. That is the number that indicates if I have COVID-19, how many other people on average are infected? So we are paying attention to that.

We are looking at our quarantine and isolation space for our students, so that we're paying attention to our ability to take care of our students. And similarly, our capacity in hospitals and in the ICU. There are a number of metrics like that that matter, and we are paying attention to them as we go along.

And I suspect what has driven a few of our peers to make some changes and adapt their approach this fall, we'll be paying attention to the same things.

Chris Nelson

We made some news this week by reducing our student fees, and I wanted to combine two questions we received. One is around what we might be doing around student fees. So maybe Dr. Reed, you can speak about that. And then the second question, maybe for Dr. Reed and President Watkins would be, which I think is connected, if we're trying to encourage people to work off campus, why are we opening offices? Dr. Reed, do you want to start with the fee reduction? And then we'll move to the other one?

Dr. Dan Reed

Sure. It's important to put a broad thing out there to just say it very directly. We have spent a lot of time thinking about the financial stress that exists for our students, and how to address that. And I'm going to enumerate quickly several things, the thing that was in the news this week is what President Watkins mentioned earlier. We reduced student fees by $150, or about 25% for the fall semester.

But remember. Other things that we have done in addition to that, we waived the online student fee. We held tuition flat for the fall semester. And in addition to that, we have about $8.5 million of federal CARES funding that will go out to Pell-eligible students and slightly above students this fall to further reduce the cost of attendance at the U.

If you put all of those things together, it's a substantial commitment to reducing the cost of higher education at the U. And so look for more news and more stories about how we roll all of that up together in attheu.utah.edu and other sources very soon.

President Watkins

That's an important message from Dr. Reed that we really want students to be in school, to stay with us and to complete their degrees. This is not the time to leave school without a degree. It will in fact have long negative consequences in your life. So stay in school. That is the message, and we're trying to have our actions aligned with that goal.

Let me comment on the issue about offices. We are asking every unit and department and college to think about what is critical from front-facing staffing for fall. We are also, in parallel, encouraging everyone who can work remotely to work with their supervisors to do so. So this is a complicated, mixed message to navigate. Remote work has worked well for many back office functions.

As we have students and classes and research in a greater extent back on campus, we need to be sure that we are staffing at least at the minimal level some of those critical front-facing offices. This will vary a lot from unit to unit what's needed. We really appreciate everyone's help, cooperation and supportive planning to do what's essential on campus. And what can be done well remotely can stay remote. So thanks for your help with those efforts.

Dr. Dan Reed

I'll just add in that, that's exactly right. All of us who were students, remember that experience when you first came on campus? It's this big, confusing place and you can feel confused, lost. It really is important that for our students, particularly the ones who are coming to campus for the first time, but all of our students who have questions about advising or facilities or the changes in procedures that if they go into their building, they'll find a welcoming face there to say, "You're part of our family. Absolutely, let me help you. If I don't know the answer, I'll point you at the place where you can get the answer."

It's really about supporting that sense of community. But those people who don't need to be there to do that, as President Watkins said, they should continue to telework.

Chris Nelson

I just want to remind everyone, our previous Return to Campus webinars are online. We heard from undergraduate advising a couple of weeks ago, we've heard from student affairs, and a lot of work that goes on to help make what is a really big, complicated campus much smaller, especially for incoming freshmen.

Dr. Lacey, I want to bring you into the conversation as well. If I were to summarize the nature of all the questions we received, it was, how are we going to keep people from spreading this? We've got students, we've got fraternities, sororities, people might travel. And there's a lot of, ‘I'm worried about what you might do.’

So your advice from a public health perspective, what's the best advice you can give everybody who might be feeling that anxiety of, ‘I'm doing the right things, but I'm worried about that person on the desk across from me?’

Dr. Steven Lacey

Right. Thanks for that. It really is the collection of things we've discussed over the past 30 minutes. A moment ago, Dr. Talboys put up a slide of those three, very basic things of hand hygiene, wearing your mask, keeping distance. And the work that Dan Reed and company have put into de-densifying classrooms, and Lori McDonald in de-densifying our residential halls, those are all basic strategies that work. So following those things.

The last thing I'll add is all those things I just said, whether it's on campus or off campus. So the only thing different, there's not four walls here. So making sure that we're doing all of those things, whether we're in the classroom or back at our apartments, or visiting with friends safely over the weekend, all of those things have to remain intact or else all of this gets very vulnerable very quickly.

Chris Nelson

Excellent. And again, if you've been on campus, we've got students moving in to residence halls. It's looking really good. So again, I want to thank everybody. I'm going to give the president the last word here just a moment, but I do want to remind everyone, all of our previous webinars are online.

Every week, the campus community receives a morning newsletter on Monday morning called attheU. I encourage everybody to spend one minute just scanning it. And if you do that every week, you're going to find all the great information that's on campus.

Again, if you've got specific questions, visit coronavirus.utah.edu. And again, if in doubt, also reach out to your college and your academic advisors. So with that, President Watkins, I'll give you the last word.

President Watkins

Thank you all so much for what you are personally doing, and doing as a collective to support health, safety and success at the University of Utah. I am deeply grateful.

And I guess, I would just have to say, face coverings, hand washing, physical distance. Keep your group small. Stay home if you're sick. Coronavirus.utah.edu, a great source of information. Thanks everybody. And oh, for the last word—Go Utah! Thank you.