Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Mar 2;18(5):2420.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph18052420.

Who Got Infected with COVID-19? A Study of College Students in Wuhan (China)

Changyu Fan  1 , Min Li  1 , Xueyan Li  1 , Miao Zhu  1 , Ping Fu  1
Affiliations

Who Got Infected with COVID-19? A Study of College Students in Wuhan (China)

Changyu Fan et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

College students represent a large group of people who frequently travel across regions, which increased their risk of infection and exacerbated the risk of COVID-19 spread throughout China. This study uses survey data from the end of April 2020 to analyze the status of COVID-19-infected cases, the group differences, and influencing factors in college students in Wuhan. The sample size was made up 4355 participants, including 70 COVID-19-infected students. We found that during the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020, college students in Wuhan were primarily infected during off-campus events after winter break or infected in their hometowns after leaving Wuhan; the percentage of college students with severe cases was relatively low, and most had mild cases; however, a large proportion of asymptomatic cases may exist; there were significant group differences in gender, age and place of residence; and the risk of infection was closely related to the campus environment, in which the population density and number of faculty and students on campus had a significant impact. The results indicated that the infection of students did not occur at random, thus strengthening student health education and campus management can help curb the spread of COVID-19 among students.

Keywords: COVID-19; college students; group differences; infection status; time of disease onset.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Epidemiological curves for the date students left Wuhan to go to their hometowns and the date of disease onset.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Distribution of the gap between time of departure from Wuhan to time of disease onset in students (n = 38).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization: WHO Timeline—COVID-19. [(accessed on 21 June 2020)]; Available online: https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline---covid-19.
    1. Chen S., Yang J., Yang W., Wang C., Bärnighausen T. COVID-19 control in China during mass population movements at New Year. Lancet. 2020;395:764–766. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30421-9. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Fan C., Liu L., Guo W., Yang A., Ye C., Jilili M., Ren M., Xu P., Long H., Wang Y. Prediction of Epidemic Spread of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Driven by Spring Festival Transportation in China: A Population-Based Study. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health. 2020;17:1679. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17051679. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Sanche S., Lin Y.T., Xu C., Romero-Severson E., Hengartner N., Ke R. High Contagiousness and Rapid Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 2020;26:1470–1477. doi: 10.3201/eid2607.200282. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. UNICEF What will a Return to School during the COVID-19 Pandemic Look Like? [(accessed on 19 June 2020)]; Available online: https://www.unicef.org/coronavirus/what-will-return-school-during-covid-....

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources