Throughout the summer, students and universities across the UK warned that a return to campus would result in a huge spike in Covid-19 cases.
The government did nothing to mitigate the spread of infection through halls – no staggered arrival, no targeted testing, no say on crippling rents that many students said had forced their return. Cases soared, and students were proven right.
Questions have loomed about Christmas since the start of a particularly chaotic term, with fears that students – many of whom have spent months isolated away from home for the first time – may not be able to return to their families at all, prompting serious mental health concerns.
Amid the anticipated second wave of the pandemic, the government has finally proposed a solution to try and mitigate the impact of the mass migration of more than a million people for the festive season.
The plans revolve around a six-day “travel corridor” between December 3 and December 9, during which students will be allowed to travel home in a staggered manner.
Questions have already been raised about the logistics of such a plan, and students have spoken out about their fears that rapid testing on a mass scale simply may not become a reality before Christmas – leaving them unsure about how to safely return to their families.
They will be encouraged to take an asymptomatic test at “targeted” universities in England, though it has not yet been revealed what universities – or how many – will be involved. The Department for Education has, however, confirmed that universities in areas of high prevalence will be prioritised, Sky News reported.
The University of Durham is one of the few universities to pilot the rapid lateral flow tests (LFTs), which can turn results around in as little as 20 minutes. The scheme is currently being trialled in a handful of colleges, largely focusing only on live-in, first-year students.
Third year student and editor-in-chief of the university’s paper Imogen Usherwood said: “At this point it’s only reaching a significant minority of students. I know some universities [for example, Cambridge] are testing students every week, but we’re not. I haven’t been tested once.
“The LFT scheme has been trialled with 850 students so far, and given that there’s 20,000 students in Durham that’s not many. The ideal plan is that everyone is tested every week, but it feels like we’re a long way away from that currently.”
Usherwood said the prospect of all students getting a test before the travel corridor opens “feels like a very big step from where we are now.”
She continued: “If the LFTs are as quick as they say they are then perhaps it could work. Though going from testing 800-or-so students who live-in to 20,000 who live all over the city seems like a really big jump. I think it would be really hard to coordinate compared to universities like Oxford or Cambridge where lots of them live in their colleges.”
Leeds graduate Safi Bugel, editor-in-chief of the university’s student paper The Gryphon, said at points during the first term it had been “near impossible” to get a test at the on-site testing centre.
She added: “While at the moment it’s quite easy to get a test, I think that it’s going to get really busy. We’ve seen how hectic it can get, so when everyone wants to get home for Christmas it is just going to explode I think.”
Second year Serafina Kenny, co-editor of the opinion section of the University of Manchester’s student paper The Mancunion, told HuffPost UK it had been easy to get a test in September before the outbreaks began but at points in the term it had been more difficult as the number of cases increased.
She said: “We’ve got something like 40,000 students – not all of them in Manchester but there is just a huge number of people. We’ve been pretty much fully online since halfway through the first week of term, so at the moment there’s not really much provision for loads of students on campus.
“I’m not sure how they’d go about testing and moving a huge number of students around because we’re not used to having that many people around.”
The University of Manchester made headlines just days ago when students in halls tore down fences that had been erected around their accommodation without any warning – a move students likened at the time to creating a “prison”.
Controversies such as this, Kenny said, risked undermining student confidence in plans such as mass testing.
She said: “There’s been quite a bit of pushback [from students] against a lot of what the university is doing recently, so I’m not sure if the students themselves would be willing to follow university guidance.
“The relationship between the leadership team and the students at the moment isn’t the best.
“Ultimately I don’t think it’s the failure of the university or the students, there’s been a lot of blame put on us. I think the government have handled it awfully – to be honest I was really surprised to see they’d actually announced some kind of policy [the Christmas travel corridor].
“They were fully aware there was going to be a mass movement of more than a million students in September but just seemed to kind of ignore it.”
Robin Connolly, co-editor-in-chief of the University of Bristol’s student paper Epigram said testing at the university seemed to be working well, but that students had not been told anything about the mass-testing plans.
She explained: At the moment testing within the student population is very much an ad hoc thing – if you’ve been in contact with someone who tested positive or have symptoms then you’d probably get a test.
“A lot of people I’ve spoken to about it have said they would rather get tested before they go home for Christmas than not because they would rather know if they are safe to go home and spend time with family and grandparents.”
Universities minister Michelle Donelan admitted to Sky News on Wednesday that students had experienced a “hellish” time since arriving for the autumn term, adding that the government would be “complementing” the student travel corridor with testing.
She said: “We’re targeting that testing in some of the most highest-risk areas and universities that are highest risk.
“And also looking at those student percentages who are most vulnerable, for example BAME [Black, Asian and minority ethnic] students.
“That is one element of this strategy, you can never eliminate the risk – we’re in the midst of a pandemic – what we’re doing is trying to manage that risk, reduce it and give students the confidence to go home.”