University of Alabama is the latest proof that we shouldn’t have reopened schools

[Jacob Siegal]

• The University of Alabama has reported more than 500 positive coronavirus tests from students and faculty since classes resumed on Wednesday, August 19th.
• Entry testing showed that fewer than 1% of nearly 30,000 students had COVID-19 before school started, but the virus has been spreading quickly since their return.
• The UA System, which consists of three colleges, has reported 566 positive tests since school began.

An unsurprising, but nonetheless worrying, pattern has emerged in recent weeks. Colleges around the US have been reopening and allowing students to return to campus, then those students have been gathering in dorms, classrooms, fraternity and sorority houses, and bars, and the infection rates have spiked. It was entirely predictable, but countless schools are trying it anyway, and the University of Alabama is the latest school to run into trouble.

There are three schools in the University of Alabama System -- Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Huntsville. The one in Tuscaloosa is the largest and the one you're probably familiar with, and of the 29,938 students that were tested at the flagship university during re-entry testing, less than 1% tested positive. That was encouraging news, but according to the UA System COVID-19 Dashboard, 531 people tested positive in Tuscaloosa since class resumed on August 19th, and another 35 students and staff have been diagnosed with the disease at UAB and UAH.

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University of Alabama is the latest proof that we shouldn’t have reopened schools originally appeared on BGR.com on Tue, 25 Aug 2020 at 14:47:08 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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