Looking to Reopen, Colleges Become Labs for Coronavirus Tests and Tracking Apps

Thousands of students returning to the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York this month are being asked to wear masks in public, register their health status online each day and electronically log classroom visits for contact tracing if a coronavirus outbreak occurs. But the most novel effort at the school to measure and limit virus spread will require little effort and come quite naturally.

Students need only use the bathroom.

At more than 15 dormitories and on-campus apartment buildings, sewage is being tested twice weekly for genetic evidence of virus shed in feces. This provides a kind of early-warning system of an outbreak, limiting the need to test every student for Covid-19. If the disease is found in sewage, individual tests can be administered to identify the source.

“It’s noninvasive,” said Enid Cardinal, senior adviser to the president for strategic planning and sustainability at R.I.T. The school is among a half-dozen colleges in upstate New York adopting similar technology, which was first introduced by Syracuse University. At the University of Arizona, officials said such tests led to the discovery that several students in a dorm were infected.

The fall of 2020 will go down as a period of profound experimentation at colleges and universities transformed into hothouse laboratories. They are trying out wastewater tests, dozens of health-check apps and versions of homegrown contact technologies that log student movement and exposure risk. And they are experimenting with different testing methods that might yield faster results and be easier to administer, such as using saliva instead of nasal swabs.

Like small island nations with discrete populations, many universities are using methods that cities, states and nations often cannot. The colleges have some authority over relatively captive communities, which are made up of students largely at ease with new technology. Plus, the schools have profound motivation: Their very economic survival depends on people coming to campus safely.

College officials are also hoping that students will be motivated to make it work. Excessive risky behavior (partying, casual sex, the inevitable let-your-mask-down moments) that leads to a rise in new cases might cause campuses to close, sending students home to their parents’ basements and couches.

Thousands of positive cases have already been reported on scores of newly reopened campuses. The danger may be less to the students themselves and more to vulnerable people in their families, among college work forces and in surrounding communities. ....

The schools argue that their efforts will potentially have a much broader impact: These trial-and-error experiments could seed technologies to help the rest of society cope with the pandemic. ...