This October, Saturdays in Eugene are strange. The electricity that seemed to come with every gameday has vanished while an increasingly familiar feeling of anxiety and uncertainty has replaced it.
Recently, Ducks fans received some consolation: The Pac-12 will play a conference-only schedule starting Nov. 6. Autzen Stadium will remain empty, but the community has a team to pull for. However, according to a recent study conducted by the Surgo Foundation, the very thing the community thrives on could have great consequences.
The Surgo Foundation, a privately funded social science and data research organization, developed a tool called the COVID-19 Vulnerability Index. Their goal is to identify communities at risk for the greatest consequences once a COVID-19 outbreak starts. The index combines six different social factors: socioeconomic status, household composition and disability, minority status and language, housing type and transportation, epidemiological factors and healthcare system factors. Each community is given a score from zero to one, with one being the greatest vulnerability.
“We wanted to show people how this tool we created can show how a community is vulnerable not just in the typical obvious ways,” Bethany Hardy said, director of communications for the Surgo Foundation.
The Surgo Foundation then applied this index to college football towns. Turns out, Lane County and University of Oregon rank as the most vulnerable college football town in the nation. As of Sept. 29, the first day of online classes for UO students, there was a 68% weekly increase in cases in the county. Lane County scored a .49 on the CCVI, driven by a high score in housing type and transportation — the study found crowded housing and lack of transportation. Additionally, 18.3% of the population is over 65 years old, above the national average of 15.2%. The combination of these three factors is what placed UO at the top of the list for vulnerability.
According to Unacast, a big data organization that tracks the spread of COVID-19, Lane County has a social distancing grade of D-. This grade is based on the number of non-essential events, reduction of average mobility of the virus and decrease in encounters. Overall, the state of Oregon has a grade of C-. Even without fans, the return of college football won’t help this grade.
“We’ve seen younger students not following social distancing policies,” Staci Sutermaster said, a Surgo Foundation research fellow who led data analysis for the study. “Even if not at the university stadium or around that area, just amongst friends, those are still opportunities for spread to happen.”
The Ducks fan base will have to control some of their excitement and keep watch parties to a minimum. UO students, who are three weeks into their second term online, pose the greatest threat as spreaders of the virus.
As of Oct. 15, the university plans to ramp up testing. According to President Michael Schill, students living in residence halls have already been regularly tested, but testing will be expanded to certain groups of students and employees, with a focus on students living in large houses, such as fraternities and sororities.
The UO coronavirus task force has recorded 421 coronavirus cases since June 1, including 140 new cases over the week of Sept. 28-Oct. 5, 133 of which are off-campus students. Younger people are often asymptomatic, meaning students pose a great risk for spread.
Face coverings are required for all UO faculty, staff and students across all UO campuses. UO has also implemented hand washing stations across campus and has modified physical spaces to fit distancing guidelines.
“There’s something very intrinsic about vulnerability, but then there’s also a dynamic component about vulnerability,” Tich Mangono said, the program manager for the study. “What are the policies affecting the situation around COVID? What are the events that are happening? We’ve seen that as schools open there are events that lead to big spikes in COVID-19. We sat down internally and thought about the best way a tool can be used to make some policy decisions around COVID-19.”
On Aug. 11, the Pac-12 postponed all 2020 sporting events based on three areas of concern from the Pac-12 medical advisory committee: lack of testing, prevalence of the virus in Pac-12 communities and risk of cardiac concerns related to the virus. But just over a month later they reversed this decision based on evidence of improvement in these three areas. There will be no fans allowed at football games, a policy that other conferences have not adopted.
But the Surgo Foundation has provided a deeper understanding of community vulnerability as it relates to COVID-19. The University of Washington also made the top six, with a significant population of people with underlying chronic conditions and a social distancing grade of F. Other teams are also seeing effects firsthand, such as Alabama with the recent positive test of head coach Nick Saban. UO certainly isn’t the only community at risk.
“You may not be thinking of these college football communities as at-risk areas, but then when you layer on these vulnerable populations in the surrounding counties, it absolutely is,” Hardy said.
The Surgo Foundation plans to follow up this study by tracking the spread of the virus over the course of the season. Only time will tell how these policies will pan out.
In some ways, the COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated even further the role that the UO football program plays in the Eugene community. The decision to play football is one that affects the safety of the entire community, not just the players or even the students. The return of UO football is almost painfully exciting; the very thing Eugene craves to return could also be detrimental to the community.
