BU Publishes Public Health Data from Its Fall 2020 COVID Surveillance Efforts

University leadership and scientists, in detailed case study of COVID-related measures and outcomes, hope BU’s insights can aid other institutions, corporations

Living, working, and learning amidst a constant viral threat: Boston University leaders and scientists have written a case study documenting the lengths it took to safely reopen a residential university in one of the country’s most bustling urban centers. The case study, published today as a preprint paper on medRxiv, stands as a testament for what’s possible in our new normal of living in the COVID-19 pandemic era, and as a potential roadmap for other institutions and corporations, weary of remote functioning, that seek a path to bring people back together in person.

In March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic began to boil over in the greater Boston area and throughout the United States, BU leadership asked the majority of its 40,000-person community—students, faculty, and the vast majority of staff and researchers—to leave campus, with no idea when they’d return. Within a few weeks, it became clear that the pandemic surge was only getting worse, and scientists at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) and BU’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health forecasted that life would not return to normal anytime soon, perhaps a year or more.

Almost as soon as BU closed its doors, University leadership began building coronavirus response teams of its own—educators, scientists, engineers, clinicians, and laboratory technicians.

“There was buy-in from BU leadership from the start,” says Gloria Waters, BU’s vice president and associate provost for research and a coauthor on the case study. “[BU President Robert Brown] is an engineer. He wanted BU to develop solutions.”

BU’s COVID response task forces faced the massive undertaking, over the course of spring and summer 2020, to figure out a way to reopen BU’s urban campuses amidst a raging global pandemic.