Scotland’s Mini Plague Academic Villages, Coronavirus outbreak hits Glasgow University accommodation, the university bubble has been burst, special measures will be needed in order to suppress virus numbers because high risks groups such as medics could be the super highway for continual flare ups on campus, the ‘university experience’ is going to be rather curtailed when judged against previous years!

Dear All 

As someone who spent 20 years at Glasgow university in various jobs, I noticed very quickly that each year as the campus filled up with new students and those returning to take part in freshers week, which was week zero. All the way nearly up to xmas, you could expect viruses. So many people from so many countries, always brought disease, after we all went through our annual coughing, sneezing and flu bugs, life would returned to normal in the bubble. 

It was only natural that covid would pop up in various universities; and that fact should be no mystery to you. We are at the start of the academic year and already dozens of students are self-isolating after concerns of a coronavirus 'outbreak' at University of Glasgow student accommodation. Cairncross House sits down at the bottom of Kelvin Way, from my recollection previously, it was teaming with foreign students and some of them will have brought covid with them from their country or picked it up en route to the campus. 

20 students have tested positive for Covid in the past few days with more self-isolating, given the way student life is, even if they fire fight this outbreak, it will be one battle in an ongoing war. Yes, there will be other outbreaks, at Glasgow and pretty much every other university. In terms of sport, university sport is both team and solo, people travelling to other universities to compete. Places like the Stevenson Building will have to see ‘contact’ sport like Judo, Karate, Rugby and other close contact events, all virtually cancelled. University sport also produces a lot of people who then go onto represent Team GB, so standards will certainly drop, because sport by its nature is about perfecting mental and physical skills by repeated refinement. 

In my youth, I taught many students fitness, some of them ended up later down the line funded by the lottery and representing Great Britain. So, I know all about the effort needed to raise people up. It takes a lot of work, a lot of time and a lot of disappointments before they achieve competition level performance. One thing which I adopted as a teaching tool was to teach my students to be proficient not just in fitness but also as instructors. Everyone pretty much had to learn to teach as part of my programme, because learning to analyse in turn makes you better. This type of teaching at university was un-usual which is why I wasn’t liked by the teaching staff. 

My students were the best on campus! 

As well as the first positive coronavirus cases at Glasgow University's Cairncross House, there are also cases at Glasgow University’s Murano Student Village. This isn’t near Cairncross at Finneston, it is near the top of Queen Margaret Drive /Maryhill Road. Chances are that freshers week, always busy, was ground zero. For those who don’t know how university accommodation works, inside, it is like a hostel; on your floor will not always people doing the same course as you. If you are doing computer science, next door could be a medical student, dentist student or something doing History. Giving that they all interact, each one potentially sits at the eye of the storm and could be a super spreader passing covid to other groups. On campus, itself, does anyone really think that between lectures each room will be deep cleaned? There isn’t the time, there aren’t enough staff to do that turn around. And yes, there is cleaning staff, but they can’t manage that task, it’s a time and a numbers game. 

You are just as likely to sit at a desk which a covid sufferer previously did, and pick up the virus on your hands, and by the time you get symptoms; who knows who you were in contact with or what surfaces you touched. Some people like medical, dentists and some of the life sciences groups are particularly high risk from coming into contact with covid. Is there a strategy in place to limit their contact with the wider student population? I doubt it, just like the virus spreads so have the high risk groups all across the campus. The flaw in the system is the Accommodation Office, their job is to get you a room, not consider what your course is. Like everyone else, the universities are going to have to learn to isolate people into their various groups, but that requires cooperation. Add to the mix, various activities like sport and social, you are really talking about limiting spread, not eliminating it. 

And if coronavirus isn’t halted then next year, and every year after that there will be the same challenges until some bright spark creates a safe vaccine. So far, given what has been released, we aren’t anywhere near that happy state of affairs. 

https://www.statnews.com/2020/09/08/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-study-put-on-hold-due-to-suspected-adverse-reaction-in-participant-in-the-u-k/ 

Yesterday, I was talking about the need to develop being ‘self aware’ when out and about, prevention is always better than cure. In space of 24 hours, I have had a lot of people turn up to read that one; someone said the last paragraph resonated with them. So here it is again, ‘in these desperate times, don’t look to Nicola Sturgeon to save you, your family, your friends or your community; you have the skills to do that yourself. When outside, don’t touch surfaces if you don’t need too, that includes, doors, seats, counters, walls, sinks and toilets. Stay two metres apart; always wear your mask in any shop or inside space that isn’t your home. Limit your contacts with other people to the bare minimum, stagger your shopping hours to avoid crowds, if on a bus, try not to touch rails with your bare hands, wear gloves. Always wash your hands regularly and first thing when you return home, and don’t go out if unwell. In the meantime, stay active, both physically and mentally, and you will survive, be self aware, this is your greatest asset in fight against coronavirus’. 

Finally, diversity promoted by some people as a panacea obviously has its drawbacks, every year into the university bubble comes ‘outsiders’, that is the nature of uni, an education factory, but with outsiders comes ‘the bugs’ and this one is particularly nasty. In medicine and other various high risk groups causing transmission, there is no way that risk can be completely eliminated, especially for those in the later years who leave the bubble to go into hospitals etc. It takes one person on one day to pick up the virus and bring it back onto campus, and when you multiple up how many days, how many medics and how many locations, they will attend, you can clearly get a picture forming on how short the odds are they will infect the university community. This why I urge people be self aware, because there really is no other viable option, you can’t rely on others to provide that security blanket, it doesn’t exist.

Yours sincerely

George Laird                                                                                                                                The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University