Several USC Annenberg students are under self-quarantine after potential exposure to COVID-19 at the 2020 National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference in New Orleans last week.
One conference attendee who tests presumptively positive for the coronavirus is currently under self-quarantine for a period of 14 days, after being in New Orleans from Thursday, March 5, to Saturday, March 7, Executive Director of IRE Doug Haddix wrote in a statement.
The attendee’s lab tests were sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which can take up to a full week for results, Haddix said. This means the official diagnosis is presumptively positive until then.
The attendee who was at the NICAR conference has mild symptoms and is expected to make a full recovery, according to a statement from Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc., the nonprofit organization that hosts the conference annually. In addition to self-quarantine, the attendee is reaching out to those that they were in close contact with at the conference.
USC Chief Health Officer Sarah Van Orman told Annenberg Media that the attendee is not affiliated with USC. Van Orman adds that currently, there are no cases of COVID-19 at USC.
Students who attended the conference are also advised to remain under self-quarantine.
Van Orman said when students went to a conference where an attendee gets positive for the coronavirus, the university needs to work with the local public health department to make a determination of whether these students are considered close contacts or exposed person. She said in the case of the NICAR conference, USC student attendees did meet the definition.
Bulbul Rajagopal, one of the USC Annenberg students who attended the conference, said neither she nor anyone else on the trip is currently showing symptoms, but all are being self-quarantined in the DoubleTree Hilton Hotel in Little Tokyo as a safety precaution until March 24.
Rajagopal said in an email to Annenberg Media that a medical professional who was present in the conference room informed her that the risk of being affected “is minimal since the disease mainly affects people over the age of 60 [or] with poor immune systems.”
Mia Hairston, another USC Annenberg student who attended the conference, said that she received a text from her trip supervisor about the outbreak Tuesday at approximately 5:20 p.m.
“I freaked out. Everybody else freaked out,” Hairston said. “They don’t tell you who it was that you could have been in contact with, so you can’t put a face to who you could have possibly touched. They [officials] are saying, ‘It’s a conference, you’re at very low risk,’ but that doesn’t help. I didn’t wear a mask or anything. I didn’t think that was necessary.”
Although USC’s response to her situation was quick, Hairston was concerned about the lack of procedure put in place during her visit to the Engemann Health Center. According to her, she received a bottle of hand sanitizer and was told to call back if she was feeling ill later.
Hairston was later advised by an Engemann official to self-quarantine for the next 48 hours. She said she has not had in-person contact with anyone since Tuesday night and is also staying at the DoubleTree Hotel.
According to Hairston, the school is paying for her room and board at the DoubleTree for the remainder of her stay in isolation. She wonders how it may be financially feasible for others in a similar position as herself.
“If you can’t leave your house for 14 days, how many of us actually have 14 days worth of food in our refrigerator?” Hairston asked. “When you don’t have USC [paying for] you, how would you be able to self-quarantine?”
Van Orman acknowledges that it took a while to evaluate exposure level and to determine the need for self-isolation.
“It takes us a while because we actually have to contact the local public health department where the exposure happened and then we actually have to consult with our public health department to make a determination about whether isolation would be recommended or not," she said.
She said during this evaluation period, these students were told to stay at home.
Conference exposure is a low-risk exposure, but it’s high enough that officials recommended for students to stay in self-isolation for 14 days, according to Van Orman. For students who are under self-isolation, the university is taking care of students by providing them housing and food, she adds.
The CDC is recommending that those who attended the conference check in with their local health care providers about whether they need to be tested for testing for coronavirus.
According to Van Orman, USC does have the testing ability, but it’s for people who are at risk and have symptoms because the testing kit that USC has is “not adequate when someone is asymptomatic.” Thus, student attendees who do not show symptoms have not been tested for coronavirus.
“Certainly if anyone who was exposed had got sick, we would test them,” she said. “The problem with the test is that we don’t believe right now with certainty that it’s sensitive enough to pick it up if someone is asymptomatic, so we wouldn’t pass someone because even if it’s negative, I’m still going to make them self isolate.”
Other universities and newsrooms that had members attended the 2020 NICAR are also asking individuals to take precautions and self-isolation.
Edward Wasserman, dean of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, told students in an email Tuesday that self-quarantine “means treating themselves as a potential source of contagion, wearing masks, washing their hands frequently, disinfecting surfaces they touch, keeping away from others and away from school.”
Gabriel Cortes, an alum of Annenberg who works for American Public Media in St. Paul, Minnesota, is working from home after receiving news that his co-worker was exposed at the conference.
“Yesterday, we got an official email from the organization telling us that an attendee of the conference had tested positive,” Cortes said Wednesday. “Separately, my colleague who went to the conference with me got a notification that she had been in a session or class with this person. We both decided that it would be best if we just quarantined ourselves, even though we’re not feeling sick.”
Cortes doesn’t believe working remotely will be a problem for his company since the business encourages employees to take their work machines home.
The CEO of APM directed all non-essential employees to work from home for the foreseeable future, according to an email Cortes received Wednesday from the company. Only employees who need to keep news running and on-air will go into work.
“There are a lot of people within the company that already work remotely,” Cortes said. “I think it’s just a question of learning to operate under these new circumstances and figuring out your workflow from there. We’re lucky that we don’t need to be in the office.”
Cortes used Zoom to give a webinar to The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, about the census. He believes that working remotely online is going to become much more the norm, and said other attendees should be ready to make those quick decisions about whether or not they’re going to go into work the next day.
Cortes has been in touch with other attendees from the conference who say their businesses are encouraging them to stay home due to company policies and safety measures.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated that Dean Willow Bay informed a student of the minimal risk factor. It was instead a medical professional who was present in the conference room.
Update 2:00 a.m. March 13: The story is updated with responses from USC Chief Health Officer Sarah Van Orman.