Zoe Berg, Photo Editor

When undergraduates test positive for COVID-19, the length of their isolation period hinges largely on whether they live on-campus or off. 

The University’s current public health guidance calls for on-campus students who test positive to isolate for at least five days, with the date of their positive test marking day zero. On day five, those students can begin taking daily proctored rapid antigen tests and are released from isolation upon obtaining a negative result. For students who live off-campus, the protocol is different – University guidelines require them to be isolated for seven days, after which they may resume normal activities without first testing negative. As the undergraduate community has grappled with a surge in cases in recent weeks, some students say they have found the University’s isolation policies to be inconsistent and frustrating.  

“The test-out process has evolved over the past few weeks, based on what is being learned along the way,” Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd wrote in a statement to the News.

According to Boyd, students who live on campus must test negative before being released from isolation. Roughly 95 percent of on-campus students have tested out between days five and seven so far, Boyd wrote. On-campus students live in congregate housing, Boyd noted, and are thus subject to the test-out requirement to ensure that they do not “emerge from the isolation precautions too early.”

Boyd noted that the University’s umbrella policy — which applies to off-campus undergraduates, in addition to graduate and professional students and faculty and staff — requires COVID-positive members of the Yale community to isolate for seven days. 

“This is more conservative than the CDC guidelines, but was identified by Yale’s public health advisors as a prudent interval,” Boyd wrote. “That policy is being supported by what we are learning with the on-campus test-out process, in which 95 [percent] of students are testing out on or before day [seven].”

Betty Kubovy-Weiss ’25, a first-year student in Branford College, characterized her experience with the University’s isolation guidelines as “confusing.” Her proctored rapid antigen tests came back positive on days five, six and seven of isolation in McClellan Hall. During her Microsoft Teams testing call on day seven, Kubovy-Weiss asked her proctor whether she would be released from isolation on day 10 even if she had yet to obtain a negative result. The proctor informed her that the Yale Health team had recently decided to lengthen the isolation period to 14 days for students who kept testing positive.

“Basically my entire testing schedule and isolation could’ve been extended, and that information wouldn’t have been given to me except for the fact that I asked about it,” said Kubovy-Weiss – who ended up testing out on day eight.

Kubovy-Weiss said that her proctor told her that because most students were testing out before day 10, the 14-day contingency plan wasn’t frequently implemented — and was thus perhaps less well-advertised.

On-campus students who cannot obtain a negative result on a proctored rapid antigen test by day 10 receive “individual clinical assessment[s]” from Student Medicine to determine when they can leave isolation, Boyd wrote. Boyd told the News that the longest on-campus isolation period thus far this semester has been 14 days.

“I understand that this pandemic has thrown us curveballs all the time, but it’s nerve-wracking as someone who is ill to feel like the authority on your health does not have concrete information about what you’re supposed to be doing and what you can do to keep yourself safe and other people safe,” Kubovy-Weiss told the News.

Emails obtained by the News show that while the University had previously strictly enforced a policy requiring at least 24 hours between proctored rapid antigen tests for students isolating on-campus, it scrapped the policy on Feb. 28.

According to screenshots of text messages between students in isolation housing obtained by the News, students received varied guidance from the Campus COVID Resource Line regarding public health protocol after completing isolation. Some students said they were initially informed that if they tested out of isolation before day 10, they would need to return to their room in Arnold or McClellan Hall to sleep every night until day 10 if they lived in a double bedroom on-campus. 

But other students who called were given the opposite guidance and were told they could resume sleeping in their double immediately upon release, despite references to the policy in the University fact sheet for students isolating on campus. Others said that upon calling back a few days later, they were told the policy no longer applied, though the official online guidance still stated that it did.

The fact sheet no longer mentions such a policy. Boyd did not respond to questions about the situation, but told the News on Feb. 24 that the University’s isolation guidelines website was being updated to reflect current protocols.

Some students who isolated off-campus were frustrated by what they perceived as inconsistencies in policy. 

Rachel Cifu ’24 told the News that when she tested positive, she was instructed to isolate in her off-campus apartment. Cifu said when she asked the employee performing her contact-tracing call what the rationale was for allowing on-campus students to start testing out on day five, while off-campus students had to isolate through day seven, she was told that the University needed to turn isolation housing rooms over “as quickly as possible.”

“I think it’s kind of a detriment to public health,” Cifu said. “If you’re arguing that on-campus kids could still be positive and contagious through day eight or nine, then why wouldn’t off-campus kids also be?”

After seven days of isolation, she was permitted to resume attending classes in person without obtaining a negative test — University guidelines dictate that all students released from isolation before day 10 should continue to mask at all times and take advantage of grab-and-go options in the dining hall until day 11. 

The test-out requirement does not currently apply to off-campus students in part because remotely proctoring rapid antigen testing is “resource-intensive,” Boyd told the News. She noted that the Yale Health team is “actively exploring” the possibility of expanding the proctoring program, so that element of the system may “evolve.”

“I think that’s kind of ridiculous,” Cifu said. “If you’re still testing positive on day seven, eight, nine, 10 as an off-campus student, we wouldn’t have any idea, just because you don’t have to take a test.”

Audrey Bernstein ’25 told the News that when she tested positive, she was informed that as an on-campus student, if she chose to travel home to isolate, she would have to isolate for eight days, rather than the prescribed five-day minimum for students in on-campus isolation housing. No rationale was offered for this policy, which also differed from isolation guidelines for off-campus students, she said.

Bernstein said that she was initially told she could start attending in-person classes and utilizing the dining halls again on day eight, regardless of her testing status, but that she would not be permitted to “fully move back [onto] campus” until day 11. She said that she “guess[ed] they assumed I’d be commuting” from her home in Westport, Conn., about 45 minutes away from campus, to attend classes between days eight and 11.

But midway through her isolation period, Bernstein received an email from a Yale Health team member notifying her that a test-out policy had been instituted for all on-campus students, regardless of their isolation location. 

Boyd did not respond to questions about the situation.

“I think in general, the lack of coherent logic that underlies all of the COVID policy is just a little bit disconcerting,” Kubovy-Weiss said.

213 students tested positive for COVID-19 in the seven-day period ending on Feb. 27.