Public health experts raised concerns over U.S. schools’ slow reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, citing a lack of national and international coordination, widespread lack of preparation for the evolving virus by U.S. institutions, and miscommunication between the government and universities.

Trends from Ivy League schools revealed no uniform response, which public health experts said mirrored that of universities across the nation as there is a lack of uniform national direction. In light of the pandemic, the Ivy League helped to shape conversations among higher education institutions and their response rates highlighted the national trend. According to the Chronicle, on average, U.S. universities closed on March 12, four days after the Ivy League school average.

Most Ivy League universities reported a positive case from a college affiliate around the second week of March, and thus reacted at a similar rate. Many Ivy League schools seemed to follow suit after Columbia’s initial response.

According to public health experts, U.S. school administrators were prompted to take action by suspected or confirmed cases within their respective communities rather than taking precautionary measures. Consequently, their actions lagged behind those taken by their counterparts in other countries that saw the impact of COVID-19 prior to the United States.

Across the Ivies, Spectator found that universities also responded to the first case in their state at differing rates, which experts said resulted from a lack of federal guidance on handling the virus. Meanwhile, China’s government ordered a complete shutdown of universities and schools, while South Korea’s government advised universities to postpone the start of the academic year at the beginning of February, weeks before K-12 schools were forced to postpone start dates.

Bernadette Boden-Albala, the dean of Public Health at the University of California, Irvine, attributed the U.S. and many U.S. universities’ delayed responses to misinformation and the evolving understanding health experts had on the virus.

“Early countrywide public health decisions were delayed, and there are consequences to those early delays,” Boden-Albala said.

The delay in U.S. response may also be the result of a lack of international communication and coordination, said School of International and Public Affairs professor Robert Jervis.

“There’s been no attempt from us to lead international coordination [in] any way,” Jervis said, citing the country’s decision to cancel flights from Europe without consulting the countries impacted by the travel ban before the announcement.

While other countries such as South Korea took after China as a model of combatting the virus through prevention, the United States mostly waited for the virus to escalate before taking reactionary measures due to the general misunderstanding of the scope of the virus, Boden-Albaba said. She noted that much of the U.S. public had seen China’s tactics as extreme.

“We were all surprised when China decided to lock down an entire province, it seemed almost inconceivable,” Jervis added.

New York, in particular, did not see a stay-at-home order until March 22, and Mayor Bill de Blasio did not order the city’s schools to close until March 23. Without clear instruction from the state or city, the University responded earlier on March 15 to move its students off-campus in accordance with separate public health expertise rather than government directives. According to the New York Times, in comparison to other states, New York faced delays due to confusing guidance and political infighting.

Boden-Albala said many U.S. universities failed to take proactive measures to better inform students, including campaigns on how to prepare for the virus through handwashing and transmission prevention.

“Universities should have taken action earlier to make sure students were more informed to decrease viral spread, focusing on influenza if nothing else because the same practices ... would stop transmission of [the] coronavirus,” she said.

While universities waited for public health officials to contact them to shut down, administrators took additional measures to ensure that students suspected to have been exposed to the virus self-quarantined and that events were canceled.

Columbia requested that students not gather in groups of 25 or more on March 5, but classes were still not canceled, leaving faculty members unsure of how to proceed.

For Columbia students, the messaging from administrators and the national statistics regarding the virus’s infection rate for young populations left students misinformed about preventative measures and the risks of the virus. Students associated self-quarantine and protective masks with racial bias rather than viewing them as necessary steps to lower the infection rate of the virus.

By the time the virus escalated, students at schools like the University of Pennsylvania still received inconsistent messaging, leading many to disregard recommended practices and proceed to travel to spring break destinations, which added to the COVID-19 transmission and death toll.

Similar actions were taken at Columbia, Yale, Princeton University, and Dartmouth College. These universities originally only announced remote classes for a few weeks and later extended them to the entire semester in order to respond to the rapidly changing nature of the virus, as recommended by government officials. At the time of the initial announcement, students may not have understood the severity of the situation, but they understood days later when they were forced to evacuate. Meanwhile, according to experts, international data had already shown the significance of the virus’s infection rate.

Harvard and Cornell were the first Ivy League schools to announce a move to online instruction for the rest of the semester on March 10. Yale announced mandatory move-out on the same day.

Cornell was the last Ivy to see positive cases within its community. It also set the latest mandatory move-out with a deadline of March 28.

Dustin Duncan, a social and spatial epidemiologist at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, said he believes the University responded to the crisis in a clear and timely manner given the recommendations from public health officials and epidemiologists.

“I think that it is and remains to be a rapidly changing landscape of what to do,” Duncan said. “And then comparing COVID to other [societies] ... I think that the issue of the emerging effects of this disease is we’re learning about the disease as it’s happening.”

However, Arthur Reingold, an epidemiology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that the messaging received from federal versus state agencies resulted in inconsistent conclusions.

“Different levels of government provid[ed] different messages. The federal government, the White House, providing one message, federal health authorities and state health authorities a different message,” Reingold said. “I think that’s probably the biggest problem is that the messaging is not being consistent and many people are uncertain or confused about exactly what the right response is.”

Bolden-Albala noted that Columbia, as well as the University of Washington and the University of California, Irvine, ultimately responded in a timely manner in accordance with federal mandates, citing the presence of well-established public health schools, which led to conversations between high-level administrators and experts on how to prepare and address the crisis.

Still, she said she found the federal response rate and conflicting information alarming, citing those among the reasons for the rapid spread across the United States.

“We need to all work together now to keep some semblance of calm as we deal with the current grim reality,” Bolden-Albala said.

Kelly Pu is a Graphics deputy editor at Spectator. She can be contacted at kelly.pu@columbiaspectator.com.

Jun Yi Zhang is a Graphics reporter at Spectator. She can be contacted at junyi.zhang@columbiaspectator.com.

Stephanie Lai is a News editor at Spectator. She can be contacted at stephanie.lai@columbiaspectator.com. Follow her on Twitter @stephaniealai.

Raeedah Wahid is the Graphics editor at Spectator. She can be contacted at raeedah.wahid@columbiaspectator.com. Follow her on Twitter @raeedahwahid.