7,379 miles lie between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus outbreak. However, more than 350,000 Chinese students are pursuing higher education in the United States and 10,000 American students are enrolled in academic programs in China, according to Reuters. The sheer number of students—many of whom travelled home over winter break—renders colleges a possible incubator for a rampant outbreak of the coronavirus in the United States, especially given the close proximity of dorm living. Harvard is no exception. In the eyes of our students, how real is the threat of catching the coronavirus on campus?
Many experts say not to worry. This past Saturday, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health confirmed one case of the coronavirus in Massachusetts: a student at University of Massachusetts, Boston who had recently returned from Wuhan. Dr. Stanley Perlman, an immunologist and microbiologist at the University of Iowa, reported to Reuters that the flu may pose a higher risk than coronavirus. “Right now, anybody going to a movie theatre in Boston has virtually zero chance of coming across someone who has this infection,” Perlman says. “More likely, it’ll be someone who has the flu.”
Harvard students, however, are not all reassured by this supposed low risk of infection.
“I think the steps Harvard has taken to this point seem rudimentary, almost as if the virus were not being taken seriously. Students who have recently been to China should be screened by HUHS and not left to interpret their own health,” one student suggested.
In their first email to the student body concerning the coronavirus, Harvard University Health Services (HUHS) addressed students who recently returned from areas near Wuhan: “If you develop respiratory symptoms or fever within 14 days of travel, call HUHS or your personal healthcare provider for phone consultation.”
Yao Yin ’23 expressed confusion towards what the University meant by a “phone consultation.” “If a student is feeling ill, that might be caused by the virus and they should be immediately quarantined,” she says. Yao travelled home to Shenzhen, China over winter break, and though no one she knows has been infected by the virus, her family members who recently visited Wuhan are voluntarily quarantined in their homes.
“More serious measures should be taken by the College to prevent any chance that it might spread on campus,” Yao said.
How can HUHS be prudent without overstating risk?
Charlie Brown ’23 believes the University’s attempts to prevent a potential outbreak have so far been sufficient. He commends the administration for “keeping the whole community well-updated, giving us all advice on taking various precautions, while also keeping us informed about the development of the outbreak on a national scale.”
Brown was home in Hong Kong over break and did not undergo any screening or testing for the coronavirus after his return to Boston in January, but he noted that Hong Kong is one of the leaders in disease control and prevention due to the 2003 SARS outbreak.
Having lived through a viral outbreak as a child, he sees it as the University’s responsibility to minimize any paranoia surrounding the coronavirus. “Harvard hasn’t created the feeling of widespread panic,” he acknowledged, “unlike what is conveyed through the media.”
Panic, however, might already be swelling around campus. “One student told me that he holds his breath when walking past Asian tourists in the Yard or Square,” a first-year shared.
Fears of a coronavirus outbreak may inflame undercurrents of hostility towards Chinese visitors to Harvard. “I’m hoping that people don’t get hysterical or suspicious about Harvard affiliates who have links to China, or start freaking out about catching a virus from the groups of Chinese tourists in the Square or other people who are speaking Mandarin in and around Harvard,” Frances Hisgen ’21 said.
Hisgen deems HUHS’s guidelines for Harvard students returning from China to be perfectly adequate, and argues that excessive concerns are unfounded given America’s strong health care system. Unlike in many parts of China, the hospitals and health clinics in the US have well-established systems of isolation and supportive care which may be better equipped to combat the disease.
“We should be focusing on assisting communities that are already suffering from coronavirus,” Hisgen said, rather than worrying about when the disease will hit our community. She suggests donating masks or other medical supplies to hard-hit areas where supply chains are stretched.
Others believe alarmist attitudes are justified. “It makes total sense that people would be wary of spending time with anyone who has recently been to China, and it also makes sense that most people who went to China over break are of Chinese descent,” one student shared.
They contend that such fears do not qualify as racism, but rather an awareness that certain members of the community are at greater risk of carrying a dangerous disease. “If there were a new virus to spring up in France, I’m sure students would be skeptical of spending time with students who were recently in France, including French students,” they said.
Evidently, student opinion is divided on whether Harvard is effectively preventing a local outbreak. How can the University best guide students at this moment of confusion while mitigating growing levels of tension and alarm?
Daniel Blunt ’23 believes the University should seek the support of Chinese student and faculty groups on campus to address students from affected areas. “Some at the university have a relationship with the administration that is somewhat othering and adversarial,” he said, citing the Ethnic Studies demonstrations and the Graduate Student Union strikes. Direct communication between students and their representative groups might have encouraged a greater number of Harvard affiliates who are currently in China or have returned from China since January 19th to fill out the health form sent in HUHS’s most recent email.
“In this way, the demands for form-filling are not solely coming from the potentially othering University administration, but from organizations that by their very nature have more intimate relationships with the student and faculty bodies,” Blunt said.
He also observes that universities require students to receive vaccinations in order to attend class. Harvard officials should, in his opinion, “employ this precedent as a mandate for this circumstance, changing the language of ‘should’ fill out this form to ‘must.’”
Blunt hopes this approach would weaken anti-Chinese sentiment stemming from coronavirus concerns, so that “those with the unacceptable tendency to turn towards discrimination when feeling threatened feel less so.”
Required health forms would provide more reliable data than individual biases. An effective method of tracking exposures might then shift students’ focus from the origins of the virus to attempts to stop its spread.
One thing is certain: as we all watch the case numbers grow, the 7,379 miles between Cambridge and Wuhan seem to shrink.
Mary Julia Koch ’23 (mkoch@college.harvard.edu) writes news for the Indy.