Emer­gency Pre­pared­ness Team Evolves to Com­bat COVID-19

MISHAWAKA – Like most ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions across the na­tion, Bethel Uni­ver­sity is try­ing to pre­vent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. So far, Bethel’s mea­sures to com­bat the spread are work­ing. 

“When some­thing hap­pens, in this case the pan­demic, an In­ci­dent Man­age­ment Team is formed,” Paul Neel, di­rec­tor of cam­pus safety, said in an email. “In this case the pres­i­dent di­rected that Dr. Holt­gren lead the re­sponse.  The make-up and size of the team can vary de­pend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion be­ing ad­dressed and the needs pre­sented.” 

The short-term suc­cess is due in no small part to the ef­forts of the Emer­gency Pre­pared­ness Team (EPT), which was formed sev­eral months ago in the wake of the pan­demic. The team is led by Shawn Holt­gren, vice pres­i­dent for stu­dent de­vel­op­ment, and fea­tures var­i­ous lead­ers on cam­pus. 

The EPT ex­am­ines and dis­cusses the big pic­ture re­sponse from the in­sti­tu­tion dur­ing the pan­demic. Dean of Stu­dents Julie Beam, who is on the EPT, said the team still meets reg­u­larly.  

As the pan­demic pro­gressed and a new aca­d­e­mic year ap­proached, a sec­ond sub-group was formed out of the EPT to han­dle the day-to-day re­sponse to COVID-19. The sec­ond group is called the COVID Re­sponse Team (CRT) and is pri­mar­ily lead by Beam. The mem­bers who oc­cupy the CRT in­clude Holt­gren, Beam, Head Ath­letic Trainer Sarah Hauck, Cam­pus Nurse Dora Mad­sen and CRT As­sis­tant Polly White. 

“It’s the five of us who are work­ing func­tion­ally to man­age cases,” Beam said. “The res­i­dent di­rec­tors and John Kaehr with com­muters are also sup­port­ing that group. They may walk-out some of the prac­ti­cal de­tails of let­ting a stu­dent know that they might need to quar­an­tine or that they’ve been ex­posed to some­one.” 

Mad­sen, Beam and Hauck try to in­ter­pret the guide­lines pro­vided by the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion (CDC) and the In­di­ana State De­part­ment of Health (ISDH). Hauck is in reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the NAIA, the Cross­roads League and other or­ga­ni­za­tions Bethel ath­letic teams are af­fil­i­ated with to de­ter­mine their guide­lines. Mad­sen is com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the St. Joseph County de­part­ments of health to de­ter­mine their guide­lines. 

One of the ear­li­est is­sues the EPT and CRT faced was de­ci­pher­ing and ex­e­cut­ing the right pro­to­cols based on the nu­mer­ous guide­lines given. 

“The thing I’m find­ing…is no mat­ter how clear we think a state­ment is, there’s still five dif­fer­ent ways peo­ple can un­der­stand it,” Beam said. 

Both teams uti­lize a com­plex flow chart called the Emer­gency Man­age­ment Plan to de­ter­mine the best course of ac­tion in a sit­u­a­tion where some­one is ex­posed to COVID-19. But within each per­ceived step of ac­tion is a caveat. 

For ex­am­ple, in Au­gust, Bethel in­structed stu­dents, staff and fac­ulty to quar­an­tine if they had been ex­posed to any­one with symp­toms or tested pos­i­tive for COVID-19. A cou­ple weeks later, the ISDH up­dated its guide­lines for col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. Upon ex­am­in­ing the up­dates, the CRT re­al­ized Bethel did not have to quar­an­tine some­one based solely on whether or not the per­son they were ex­posed to had symp­toms. 

In other words, some­one with the com­mon cold or a fever does not nec­es­sar­ily have COVID-19. But if the per­son with these symp­toms was in­deed ex­posed to some­one who tested pos­i­tive for COVID-19, then the ex­posed per­son would need to quar­an­tine. 

“A lot of this as it’s shift­ing is based on what the avail­abil­ity of test­ing and how ac­cu­rate we be­lieve the test­ing is,” Beam said. “So, I mean, there’s some is­sues with that there are both false-neg­a­tives and false-pos­i­tives.” 

A false-neg­a­tive test is a COVID-19 test that shows some­one tests neg­a­tive for the virus, when they ac­tu­ally do have the virus. A false-pos­i­tive test is the ex­act op­po­site sit­u­a­tion, where a test in­cor­rectly shows some­one test­ing pos­i­tive for the virus. 

Ac­cord­ing to Beam, false-neg­a­tives are more preva­lent than false-pos­i­tives. Also, the rate of false-pos­i­tive and false-neg­a­tive test re­sults is dif­fer­ent de­pend­ing on the type of test. Ac­cord­ing to the As­so­ci­ated Press, there are three broad cat­e­gories of COVID-19 tests of­fered in the U.S. at the mo­ment. 

Other is­sues both the CRT and EPT are fac­ing is find­ing lo­cal COVID-19 test­ing lo­ca­tions and the ap­prox­i­mate time it takes to re­ceive test re­sults. Mad­sen said back in July, some test­ing sites took 13 days to re­lease test re­sults. Now, there are more lo­cal, walk-in test­ing sites that take 3 to 4 days for test re­sults to re­turn. 

“Test­ing is help­ful,” Beam said. “It’s also ex­tra con­fus­ing be­cause test­ing is so time-sen­si­tive.” 

Mad­sen and Hauck are both in­struct­ing ex­posed or symp­to­matic stu­dents to quar­an­tine for 14 days. If an ex­posed stu­dent de­vel­ops COVID-19 symp­toms at least five days into their quar­an­tine pe­riod, they are asked to get tested. 

The rea­son the CDC re­quires ex­posed peo­ple to quar­an­tine for 14 days is be­cause COVID-19 symp­toms can show up to­wards the end of the quar­an­tine pe­riod. 

Be­cause of the quar­an­tine guide­lines, some Bethel classes have seen a drop in in-per­son at­ten­dance rates. As a re­sponse to stu­dents and fac­ulty won­der­ing how Bethel is do­ing in terms of pre­vent­ing the virus from spread­ing, the EPT cre­ated and re­leased a risk level. 

The risk level is a color-coded sys­tem that eval­u­ates the case rates of both Bethel’s cam­pus and St. Joseph County. As of Oct. 5, the risk level is the color blue, mean­ing the case rate is low risk but re­quires in­creased readi­ness.