Despite concerns over the spread of the coronavirus, college parties have been reported around area campuses. Dr. Nancy Nielsen, Senior Associate Dean for Health Policy at UB's Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, is alarmed by the reports. "This is simply not a two-week disease," said Nielsen after hearing of new studies during a recent international conference on COVID-19.
"If you look at people who were symptomatic with COVID, not necessarily hospitalized but did have symptoms, aged 18 to 34, fully one in five of them still had symptoms months later," Nielsen explained.
"Those symptoms could be anything from what's described as the kind of brain fog to fatigue to achiness to just not being right."
Nielsen applauds the effort at UB to conduct "surveillance testing" for coronavirus infections. She hopes so-called "hot spots" can be identified before infection spreads throughout the campus.
