Welcome to UC San Diego and Return to Learn Update

After a great deal of preparation and planning, this week UC San Diego commenced our fall quarter with in-person and online classes. Whether you are on-campus or remote, I’d like to wish our students, faculty and staff a warm Triton welcome. We are excited that classes are officially underway, students are using online opportunities to connect and engage, and new friendships are being made.

I want to thank everyone who worked diligently behind the scenes on campus and at UC San Diego Health to ensure the smooth and incremental repopulation of our campus in La Jolla. UC San Diego’s Return to Learn program is helping to facilitate a safer start to in-person activities, and I am confident that our campus community is committed to making this a fulfilling and successful fall quarter.

We are off to a strong start. A total of 5,730 undergraduate students moved into campus housing over a 10-day period beginning September 19. Our staggered move-in process allowed for effective physical distancing and mandatory rapid-result testing. The UC San Diego Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine (CALM) averaged 1,500 tests daily for the two-week period that included move-in, completing far more tests than any other UC campus. Most test results were returned the same day, with an average turnaround of 15 hours.

Of the nearly 6,000 student tests, only 10 students tested positive, and more than 5,700 students tested negative, equating to a positivity rate of 0.17%. Students who tested positive received clinical guidance and were promptly moved to isolation housing. The university currently has more than 600 beds available and ready to accommodate such needs. Students who tested positive and were in isolation housing will be permitted to move back into their general campus housing once they are no longer infectious. Seven additional students, no longer infectious but who had a recent prior history of COVID-19, also moved onto campus. All students on-campus will be tested within two weeks of their initial tests to confirm negative results.

Since mid-March, UC San Diego has relied on the expertise of our world-renowned faculty and medical teams to thoughtfully plan for returning to in-person teaching and research on campus in the safest way possible. We were the first university to announce a commitment to incrementally repopulating our campus, and we have taken the necessary time to develop our flexible Return to Learn plan to do so prudently.

Our approach is guided by three key pillars: risk mitigation, virus detection and intervention. During the spring and summer, we successfully tested this approach on our campus with a limited number of students, researchers, faculty and staff. This approach currently is working very well for our campus. Moving forward, the adaptability of our plan and frequent communication will be key to our continued success. If necessary, our campus operations will shift should we see significant changes in the public health of our campus or of the larger San Diego community.

To learn more about our campus protocols and changes, watch our new Return to Learn video.

Detailed Safety Protocols During Move-In

To reduce population density in our residence halls, all students living on campus reside in apartment-style suites and have their own bedrooms. Students pre-registered for staggered move-in times in advance of their return to campus to avoid congestion at residential units, and were allowed to be accompanied by up to two people for support. As students and families arrived in their vehicles, they were greeted, given a welcome kit and screened by Health Promotion staff to ensure they and their family were wearing the required masks and were without symptoms. Following this step, the students participated in drive-through testing for SARS-CoV-2 and were allowed to proceed to their residential area. Walk-up testing was offered as well.

While test results have been available within less than 24 hours, students will continue to remain masked (except when showering or when alone in their personal bedroom) and maintain social distancing over the next two weeks while others continue to arrive.

Twelve days after the last student arrives at their apartment, all residents of the unit will be retested. If all test results are negative, students are no longer required to wear their masks or maintain strict distancing within their residential unit.

All UC San Diego students residing on campus or coming to campus for any reason will be required to have testing for SARS-CoV-2 twice a month throughout the academic year. Each test is at least 12 days apart, with no more than 16 days between tests.

Cutting-Edge Wastewater Monitoring

Wastewater monitoring is an important component of our multifaceted and proactive campus viral detection strategy. UC San Diego has been testing sewage for more than a month from two health facilities, a research building and the Revelle College residence area. These efforts have already proven helpful in identifying asymptomatic individuals shedding the virus. SARS-CoV-2 was detected on September 4 from the waste stream in the Revelle area. Prompt messaging notified those on campus of the situation and urged them to get tested as soon as possible. More than 657 campus community members responded by getting tested within three days.

The campus will scale up wastewater testing considerably in the coming months using advanced technologies provided by the Knight Lab within the university’s Center for Microbiome Innovation.

Fighting COVID-19 with Technology

One very promising new way UC San Diego will be able to help rapidly control COVID-19 outbreaks is through the CA COVID Notify app. Our campus is leveraging new technology on Apple and Android smartphones to help notify individuals of possible exposure. Students and staff can voluntarily opt-in to an anonymous exposure notification system that lets them know if they have come into contact with someone who has tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Learn how to activate CA COVID Notify.

For every person who adds and uses the notification system on their smartphone, the greater the possibility of quick detection. Thus far, an estimated 11,000 people at UC San Diego have added the notification system, which augments existing contact tracing efforts on campus. This voluntary program is the first pilot for the State of California, and will be followed by UC San Francisco. If the pilot is successful, it will set the foundation for the state to offer voluntary exposure notifications to all Californians using smartphone-based technology. By some estimates, for every two users of the system, one potential SARS-CoV-2 infection could be stopped.

The Power of Peer Education to Prevent Viral Transmissions

We have enlisted more than 200 peer educators as Triton Health Ambassadors to help educate students on the importance of wearing masks and staying six feet apart. They will be easy to spot in their yellow shirts around campus. Please look for these friendly volunteers if you have questions, need a new mask or just want to say thank you.

In addition, resident advisors (RAs) within our campus housing buildings have been trained in health and safety best practices. They are happy to assist anyone with questions about preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Thank You, Return to Learn Teams

It takes a village to mount a program like UC San Diego’s Return to Learn. Our village included representatives from faculty, staff, students, and administrators on campus as well as a host of faculty-physicians and administrators from our top-ranked UC San Diego Health system. Hundreds of UC San Diego employees and students spent over four months building and testing new systems and protocols. We couldn’t have realized our goal without each of them.

UC San Diego is known for its collaborative, interdisciplinary research and innovation. Our tradition of working together to spark ideas and see them through to practical solutions trained us for a real-life situation like this pandemic. We are here today because of our work together. I want to thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart.

We Are All In This Together

All of our campus safety precautions—the daily symptom screener, the CA COVID Notify app, testing regularly, wearing your mask, keeping your distance and frequent handwashing—add up to make a big difference. Do your part every day to keep yourself and others healthy.

I am counting on you, as Tritons, to commit to keeping our UC San Diego community safe. Please embrace and diligently follow all campus and public health guidelines and insist that your friends and colleagues do the same. I’m proud of every Triton for rising to this occasion. The eyes of the city, state and nation are on UC San Diego. As changemakers, the example we set can change the world. Thank you.

Pradeep K. Khosla
Chancellor