Why some colleges can stave off COVID-19 infections and others can’t

Some college campuses, including Sarah Lawrence College in New York, have done a good job in preventing students and faculty from contracting COVID-19 while opening most of their campuses, according to news reports.

A November 9, 2020 National Geographic article examined how Sarah Lawrence College has managed to record only five cases of COVID-19, while other schools have exceeded 1,000 cases.

The article featured Sarah Fortune, John LaPorte Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases and chair of Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, who discussed how the level of risk on college campuses is influenced by how freely students move between the campus and the surrounding community.

“The places that are more porous, where there is definitely transmission into the campuses from the outside community, these are the places that have to attend much more behavioral risk mitigation strategies,” Fortune said.

Read the National Geographic article: The colleges with virtually no coronavirus cases