Local experts predicted an increase in COVID-19 cases. They were right.

A week after bringing students back to campus, UNC has shifted all undergraduate courses to remote-only learning, effective Wednesday, after the University reported 135 new cases on campus. 

Multiple medical experts, including UNC epidemiologists with experience in coronavirus research, said that this increase in cases was expected. 

UNC confirmed four clusters since Friday — in Ehringhaus Community, Hinton James Residence Hall, Granville Towers and the Sigma Nu fraternity house. UNC uses the the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services' definition of "cluster" — which consists of at least five or more cases in close contact.

Kimberly Powers, an associate professor of epidemiology, has been involved in multiple COVID-19 research efforts on campus. She said in an email that she was not shocked by the detection of clusters this week. 

“I am definitely concerned about the likelihood of a larger-scale outbreak on campus,” Powers said in the email, sent Saturday.

James Thomas, an associate professor of epidemiology, said the University did the right thing with these notifications. But in an interview Friday, he said the broader decision of it being safe to reopen campus was still not clear.

“One of the things that we typically land on is just how muddy all the information is,” Thomas said. “We don't know enough if it’s a slam dunk that is wrong to bring students back to campus — nor do we know enough to say it’s a slam dunk that we should bring students back to campus.”

Thomas has worked to create a Pandemic Ethics Dashboard as a resource for policymakers, which lays out media concerns, ethical principles and proposed guidance. He said a high level of transparency is required to build trust and cooperation.

Just prior to UNC’s reopening last week, Orange County Health Department Director Quintana Stewart sent a letter to campus administrators recommending on-campus housing restrictions and at least temporary online instruction.

“The lag in the communication about that [Orange County letter] did not help build trust — it decreased the trust,” Thomas said. “There is some repair work that needs to be done. Sometimes when things are moving fast and the lack of trust is enough, as in personal relations, it is just immensely difficult to restore trust.”

The UNC Carolina Together roadmap set up a dashboard at the end of July to provide the public with information about statistics such as case numbers, housing occupancy and quarantine and isolation availability. Campus test numbers — including the number of positive and negative cases — are only updated weekly.

Provost Robert Blouin said in his Aug. 6 Roadmap update that updating these numbers weekly allows the University to protect the privacy of students and employees while enabling it to observe campus trends.

“Weekly feels too slow,” Thomas said. “One of the ethical principles is timely communication. It is good that we have a dashboard so we can follow things and look at data, but a weekly update just feels like every week, we're sailing in the dark.”

UNC requires all students to wear masks in public spaces and maintain 6 feet of social distance whenever possible. Thomas said that the enforcement of these practices could help students and faculty remain safe on campus.

“The natural course of events does not encourage people to follow the standards,” Thomas said. “We need to bring in other ways to make that connection. There needs to be some way to enforce these standards — and I hope we can find a way that is not punitive — that is more of a culture shift on campus so that it becomes an expectation to wear masks.”

Assistant University Editor Evely Forte contributed reporting. 

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