JUE Insight: College student travel contributed to local COVID-19 spread

Abstract

Due to the suspension of in-person classes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, students at universities with earlier spring breaks traveled and returned to campus while those with later spring breaks largely did not. We use variation in academic calendars to study how travel affected the evolution of COVID-19 cases and mortality. Estimates imply that counties with more early spring break students had a higher growth rate of cases than counties with fewer early spring break students. The increase in case growth rates peaked two weeks after spring break. Effects are larger for universities with students more likely to travel through airports, to New York City, and to popular Florida destinations. Consistent with secondary spread to more vulnerable populations, we find a delayed increase in mortality growth rates. Lastly, we present evidence that viral infection transmission due to college student travel also occurred prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Simulating the Impacts of Interregional Mobility Restriction on the Spatial Spread of COVID-19 in Japan

“…This control measure is especially important for rural regions with scarce healthcare resources. Consistent with our simulation results, college student travel during the spring break has contributed to local infection transmission in the U.S. 21…”

College Openings in the United States Increased Mobility and COVID-19 Incidence

“…The susceptibility of children and college-age individuals to COVID-19 and their role in transmission has been heavily debated and remains hard to quantify [5][6][7][8][9] . Following the first wave of school closures in the United States in the spring of 2020, COVID-19 incidence fell across the country, leading many public health officials to view closing schools as a viable strategy to mitigate the spread of the pandemic 10,11 .…”

“…However, the role of communal living, and its interaction with mobility and mixing, is difficult to identify empirically since people enter communal living settings non-randomly. The resumption of teaching on a college campus provides a sudden change in a community's exposure to communal living and differences across college campuses lead to variation in the extent to which campus reopenings induce mixing with higher and lower incidence areas.The susceptibility of children and college-age individuals to COVID-19 and their role in transmission has been heavily debated and remains hard to quantify [5][6][7][8][9] . Following the first wave of school closures in the United States in the spring of 2020, COVID-19 incidence fell across the country, leading many public health officials to view closing schools as a viable strategy to mitigate the spread of the pandemic 10,11 .…”

Back to School: The Effect of School Visits During COVID-19 on COVID-19 Transmission

“…We then link the county-level schools visits data to medical claims data collected from a nationwide sample of approximately 7 million individuals (3 million households) with employer-1 Safegraph. www.safegraph.com 2 We do not consider visits to colleges and other post-secondary schools (M. S. Mangrum and Niekamp 2020). sponsored health insurance.…”