Contact tracing will be key to curbing the spread of the coronavirus among college-age students this upcoming school year, federal health officials say in a new report about a group of UT students who contracted the virus while together on spring break.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s report released Wednesday said it’s imperative for health and school officials to work together to quickly test, trace and identify clusters of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, once universities reopen.
Local health officials on March 27 first put this process into action after tracing a cluster of 60 University of Texas students who contracted the coronavirus following a trip to Mexico earlier that month.
A UT student with a cough, sore throat and shortness of breath tested positive for COVID-19. The next day, on March 28, two more UT students tested positive.
Health officials said they immediately began a lengthy contact tracing investigation after learning all three students had recently traveled to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, from March 14 to 19.
Officials used flight manifests to trace and test 183 of the travelers, who used several private, charter and commercial flights to return to Austin.
Investigators said they texted and called the travelers, in addition to people who were in direct contact with them, up to three times. They ultimately interviewed 97% of the 298 people believed to have been exposed to the disease.
Of the 231 people tested, 64 had tested positive, with 60 of those being students who traveled to Mexico.
Several students told investigators they shared housing in Mexico and in Austin.
However, only one of the four people who did not travel to Mexico but tested positive lived with one of the students, officials said.
The most common symptoms for those who tested positive were sore throat, headache and loss of sense of smell or taste, officials said. Only six people reported a fever.
One-fifth of all those who tested positive for the virus had no symptoms, according to the report.
However, 84 people who tested negative for the virus also reported experiencing the same symptoms as those who had a positive test result.
“Contact tracing and testing of close contacts, regardless of symptoms, is important in limiting spread, especially in young and healthy populations living in shared housing and in controlling future COVID-19 outbreaks that might occur as schools and universities consider reopening,” the report said.
None of infected individuals was hospitalized or died, according to health authorities.
Officials said some positive cases could have been missed for several reasons, one being because students were only tested once because of the lack of test kits at the time.
The University of Texas plans to begin the fall semester in-person on Aug. 26, but will continue operations remotely after Thanksgiving to curb any possible spread during the holiday season.
CORONAVIRUS IN TEXAS: What we know, latest updates
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