photo by: Conner Mitchell/Journal-World

A man exits the Kansas Union wearing a mask on Monday, Aug. 10, 2020.

When the University of Kansas campus officially opens Monday for the start of the fall semester, it will do so with a low physical density, according to new guidance issued from the university’s Pandemic Medical Advisory Team.

In a broader release of the advisory team’s decision-making processes that will guide it through the fall semester, KU defined five different levels of campus operations — Level 1 being open with a “new normal” of managed density, and Level 5 being similar to the spring semester where the campus was only open to essential personnel.

KU will open at a Level 3 — or “low density” — according to a message from KU Chancellor Douglas Girod. The message does not quantify what exactly the level means in terms of class capacities or other such operational issues. A KU spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Level 4, which would presumably would be the phase KU would move to if the situation worsened, is labeled as “ultra low density,” and would implement infection prevention requirements more stringent than Douglas County requirements. The Level 3 mode says it will use infection prevention methods consistent with Douglas County requirement, including “advanced/heightened social distancing, environmental cleaning.”

Girod, who sits on the advisory team and released the guiding processes in a campus message Friday afternoon, reiterated a common theme from the university as the pandemic continues: there is no one factor that will force a drastic change such as all-online learning or again closing the campus.

The team, Girod said, will use more than 30 indicators to inform their decisions about how to guide the campus. Those indicators are grouped into four categories: Community considerations, campus considerations, leading indicators, and lagging indicators. It requires a comprehensive look at the status of those indicators to determine whether substantive changes are needed, according to the team’s planning document.

“We learn more about this virus every day, and predetermined threshold levels for action and inaccurate data risk ill-advised decisions with unintended consequences for community health and safety,” the document says.

The indicators of whether change is needed range from wide-scale considerations such as state or county health department orders, area hospital capacity, and disease testing capacity, to campus considerations such as an increase in employees being absent from work and more positive cases than anticipated based on projected modeling.

The full planning document also outlines “dashboard indicators” of metrics KU’s advisory team will use and monitor on a daily basis, including: The results of students, faculty/staff, and student-athletes testing positive; testing positivity rate, how many community members are isolated (meaning they have the virus), and daily testing counts at Watkins Health Center, the on-campus health care provider.

A KU spokesperson also did not immediately respond to a question about whether this dashboard would be made publicly available so the community could view it in real-time. Launching a COVID-19 dashboard is an action many universities around the country have taken during their respective reopening processes.

The document also lays out seven specific actions KU can take during the semester should the aforementioned indicators show that changes are needed:

• Advanced or heightened social distancing and cleaning practices

• Focused COVID-19 testing resulting from positive trends in specific populations or locations, as well as randomized sampling

• In-person class suspensions

• Reductions and/or closures to on-campus housing, which could also apply to specific residence halls and housing units, in addition to further reducing classroom occupancy reductions and closures

• Modified in-person class attendance for certain populations (e.g., individuals physically present in an identified cluster/outbreak, medically vulnerable populations, higher risk populations)

• Expanded existing clinic and testing capacity or creation of new surge clinic and testing capacity

• Temporary on-campus closure; full transition to remote learning

The Pandemic Medical Advisory Team, which consists of nine area medical doctors, public health experts and scientists, will offer Girod and other KU officials recommendations related to any potential on-campus status changes, including full or partial closure.

“I want to emphasize how fortunate we are to have some of the region’s top medical doctors and public health officials on our Pandemic Medical Advisory Team,” Girod said Friday. “Each member brings tremendous expertise and a unique perspective that has benefited this decision-making framework. As a result, we can be confident that decisions related to campus operations will be data-driven and guided by the latest science, and will continue to prioritize the health and safety of our university above all else.”

KU has hinged much of its reopening hopes for the fall semester on community adherence to public health guidelines and university policies. However, the advisory team’s decision-making process document does acknowledge there are limits to how much protection any policy can provide.

“Risk cannot be eliminated, only mitigated,” it says.

The full document can be accessed at the protect.ku.edu website.