As BU coronavirus rate rises, school tells students if they go home for Thanksgiving, don't come back

BU Today reports the director of BU's Student Health Services sees "Covid fatigue" kicking in and people letting down their guard and getting infected outside the "BU bubble" - awith recent increase in positive test numbers due mainly to students living off campus in Boston.

Students who do travel away from BU - even to other parts of Massachusetts - and then come back anyway will have to quarantine on their return until after they've gotten three straight negative Covid-19 tests.

The BU Covid-19 dashboard shows 68 new infections between Nov. 6 and yesterday. Although the school's rates of infection among students - 0.33% - and staffers remains far lower than for the city that mostly surrounds it, the numbers are higher than they were earlier in the semester. On Tuesday, BU reported 15 new cases, a new one-day record for the school.

As of Nov. 6, the Boston Public Health Commission reports a citywide Boston positivity rate of 7.2%, although 1.4% in the Fenway and 3.4% in Allston Brighton, the two neighborhoods that border BU's campus. Brookline, which also borders the campus, has a positivity rate of 0.65% over the last two weeks, according to state figures.

BU currently has 69 students in isolation because of Covid-19.

The majority of transmission is happening inside households or from off-campus gatherings,” she says. “These gatherings don’t have to be large. We have people trying to be thoughtful in their gatherings, getting two households together, or having someone visit from out of state. But your bubble is only as good as every member of your bubble."

To date, no BU students or staffers have had to be hospitalized due to the virus, but officials worry that could change if the infection rate continues to rise.