BU study says full in-person college classrooms safe without social distancing
BOSTON - Returning to full in-person learning maybe be safe this fall, if certain precautions are taken.
Researchers from the BU School of Medicine analyzed data on more than 140,000 university class meetings back in the fall of 2021. At the time, there was no physical distancing but vaccines were mandated and universal masking was enforced.
While they identified 850 cases of COVID-19 among students and faculty over the semester, after studying the genetic sequences of the viruses, none were actually confirmed to be due to in-class transmission.
This study was conducted before the highly transmissible Omicron variant but does suggest that colleges and universities may be able to safely have full in-person learning as long as there are mitigation strategies in place like vaccine mandates and universal masking.