MOSCOW — Officials with Washington State University and the University of Idaho say they are taking steps to be prepared for a local outbreak of COVID-19; however, faculty from both schools are urging communities to consider more dramatic action.

Both WSU and UI said they already have groups that monitor and prepare for the possibility of an infectious disease outbreak. Since the new coronavirus first appeared, these groups have split into smaller teams and task forces in order to devise strategies that can be deployed in the event that cases appear locally.

“We’re definitely prepared for what happens when, or if, we have an outbreak in our community or on our campus, but of course, the current risk is still considered low at this point,” said Emily Tuschhoff, director of health promotion at the UI. “That could change tomorrow, but (we’re) definitely prepared to make those decisions — our infectious disease response team, the core team, meets at least weekly.”

WSU Vice President of Marketing and Communication Phil Weiler said there are a variety of strategies that can be deployed to protect student health without interrupting instruction. He noted faculty at WSU are being offered training on how to conduct class remotely to allow students to either tune in to a live broadcast or access a pre-recorded lecture online.

Even before these methods become necessary, he said there are less drastic avenues that can be pursued to limit the potential spread of disease, like encouraging students to stay home when sick, washing hands regularly and avoiding close contact, like shaking hands.

“WSU exists to educate students — to provide instruction — we want to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make sure that we don’t interrupt that instruction,” Weiler said. “There’s a wide variety of ways we can address that and depending on the severity of the situation, we can kind of escalate things as we go along.”

Weiler said WSU will be looking to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the local public health departments for guidance in escalating its response to a local outbreak. He said there are already confirmed cases of COVID-19 near WSU extension campuses in Bellevue and Vancouver, and it has not been deemed necessary to cancel classes at those locations yet.

Weiler said WSU has been recalling students from countries where outbreaks have prompted the federal government to issue high-level travel advisories, including Italy, South Korea, Iran and, of course, China. UI has brought back students as well and has canceled some academic trips to places like Taiwan.

Faculty from both schools, including WSU assistant professor of plant pathology Maren Friesen, are urging community members to do more to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Friesen, who studied population biology in pursuit of a doctoral degree at the University of California, Davis, said many experts she’s been in contact with, including one Seattle-based epidemiologist, agree that the disease has likely already reached the Palouse. She said as most people with a healthy immune system would only experience mild, flu-like symptoms, it’s possible the disease has gone unnoticed locally for weeks.

In an open letter sent to community leaders Thursday, Friesen and a handful of other professors from both UI and WSU urge residents of the Palouse to consider making a more thorough effort to limit the the transmission of COVID-19.

If it’s possible to do so without interrupting daily life, she said people should consider engaging in “social distancing techniques” like working from home and avoiding unnecessary physical interaction. She said even declining to shake one person’s hand could mean fewer people could pick up the virus, making it less likely that someone with a compromised immune system will encounter it and possibly die.

Friesen herself has voluntarily self-quarantined after traveling to the Bay Area, Seattle and New York in the past two weeks. She said as relatively small, isolated communities, residents can potentially exert a lot of control over the severity of a local outbreak of COVID-19, and she wants to encourage people to seize that power. She said “concern is warranted, fear is not.”

“There’s no silver bullet, magic solution — at this point, we don’t have a vaccine (and) past experience suggests that it’s going to take a long time before we have one,” Friesen said. “So any small thing that will reduce the transmission rates, like just by thinning out our contact network with each other and reducing social contact — all of that is going to help.”

Jackson can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to [email protected].