Keeping it close: The role of a Campus COVID Support Team (CCST) in sustaining a safe and healthy university campus during COVID-19

It has been over 24 months since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic forced university campuses to shut down and then reopen under new safety guidelines. Now as we move into the subsequent years of the pandemic, we can look back and evaluate what has worked, improvements to be made, and plans for providing a sustained response for a campus community. In this article we detail one campus response to the COVID-19 pandemic and directions being taken to ensure a sustained campus COVID support team (CCST) is in hand to ensure the health and safety of the university community. The CCST was created to serve as a one-stop-shop to help the university community navigate COVID-19 policies and procedures. The responsibilities of the CCST include conducting case investigations for any positive COVID-19 tests within the university community, contact tracing for authorized university affiliates, epidemiological surveillance and mitigation efforts, and communication through real-time analysis and dashboards. Continuous monitoring procedures demonstrated the CCST conducted all case investigations within the post-testing 24-hour window, thus keeping the university test-positivity rate below 3%. Quality improvement surveys demonstrated a high level of satisfaction with the CCST efforts and provided areas for improvement and sustainability. Having a public health faculty led CCST enabled the university to act swiftly when COVID-19 positive cases were emerging and deter widespread campus COVID-19 outbreaks. The CCST timeliness and connectivity to the campus has demonstrated benefits to the health and safety of the campus. Highlights 1. Universities are their own communities and having on campus COVID support teams can mitigate potential COVID-19 outbreaks. 2. Having a public health driven Campus COVID Support Team that can conduct case investigations within 24 hours of a positive test result has demonstrated benefits to taking responsive measures. 3. Continuous quality improvement efforts including surveys of the Campus COVID Support Team should be implemented for any COVID service efforts. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. ### Funding Statement This study did not receive any funding ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: Ethics committee/IRB of The George Washington University waived ethical approval for this work I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes All data produced in the present work are contained in the manuscript and available online at coronavirus.gwu.edu *