UMKC student has COVID-19, but officials wait four days to inform campus, mother says
The University of Missouri-Kansas City learned that a law student tested positive for COVID-19 but waited four days before alerting the campus, said the mother of the patient, who is now in pulmonary intensive care at a local hospital.
In addition, a professor of the student insisted she see her for an in-person meeting, even though the university had switched to online-only classes and the student herself requested a teleconference, saying she wasn’t feeling well, the mother told The Star.
The mother, Louise Lynch, said she contacted UMKC on March 21, the day her daughter tested positive for the coronavirus.
“I called the chancellor,” Lynch said. “I left a voice message. I told the chancellor my daughter tested positive.”
Four days later, on March 25, the university announced in a campus notice that a student had tested positive for the disease. But it made no mention that she is a law school student and was last on campus March 16, so few people knew whether they might have been exposed.
“I feel like there is this cloak of silence, that we don’t want any bad publicity,” said a woman who works in the UMKC School of Law and saw the student come in that day. She spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of losing her job.
“But I don’t think anyone would be surprised to learn that someone at UMKC tested positive. But some people will be surprised to learn that someone tested positive but we didn’t tell you.”
In a statement to The Star, UMKC officials said privacy concerns prevented them from providing more details to the campus community, and they rely on the Kansas City Health Department to notify people who may have come in contact with an infected person.
“Public health officials are the sources providing public information and notice to affected individuals about confirmed cases,” the statement said. “For privacy reasons, we aren’t informed by those officials of the details of cases now presenting and, again for privacy reasons, we wouldn’t be able to convey any information about individuals who have been diagnosed.”
The Kansas City Health Department said in an email to The Star, “Often, the university does not know the name of the affected individual and the HD does not provide that information. It is kept confidential by the health department, but sometimes the patient will self-divulge their own diagnosis.”
“In this time of national crisis, we rely on public health officials for accurate information,” said John Martellaro, a university spokesman. He said officials told the campus community the day local public health officials informed them of the case.
But Lynch said she had already provided the university all the information about her daughter.
The day the 27-year-old law student met with her professor, she then went to her doctor and learned she had a fever of 102 and bacterial pneumonia, Lynch said. On March 20, the doctor admitted her to the hospital with a fever of 103.5 and low oxygen levels, Lynch said. The student was diagnosed with COVID-19 the next day.
“She has been at the hospital fighting for her life,” Lynch said. “I can’t begin to tell you the horror this has been on my family. I can’t tell you the hell.”
A need to know
After The Star published this story online Wednesday morning, Barbara Glesner Fines, dean of UMKC’s law school, sent a memo to law students.
“This is a situation in which I, and the university, are required to strike a balance between respecting a student’s privacy and protecting the health of our community,” the memo said. “Furthermore, the university is bound by privacy laws not to share student academic or health information.”
She said health officials reached people who had come in contact with the student and none tested positive for COVID-19.
“More information would not change how we should continue to protect ourselves and others — stay home, wash our hands, and monitor our health,” the memo said. “The coronavirus epidemic will inevitably touch more in our community and more of us personally. “
Earlier Wednesday, UMKC’s Student Government Association issued a statement urging the university to provide more details on the case.
“The leadership of SGA has been both publicly and privately pressing university leadership to be forthcoming with all relevant, non-identifying information about the student who contracted COVID-19 since the day the university first announced the case,” the statement said.
“Despite this pressure from student leadership and the expressed wishes of this student’s mother, university administration has continued to withhold information as basic as which academic department this student belongs to, or what locations the student may have visited.”
Lynch said she got a list from her daughter of the places she had been on campus and the people she had been in contact with “so that I could notify them.”
The law school worker, an administrative assistant, confirmed the student had been in the suite where she works on March 16, but they were not in particularly close contact.
The worker said the woman’s mother later told her about the coronavirus test result. While the assistant did not hear from the health department, she said a university worker called.
“They asked me a lot of questions but they wouldn’t tell me anything. But I already knew, by then” the staff member said. “They told me to keep quiet about it.”
She said the university worker “decided I was not at risk. They told me I was in a gray area. I guess it meant that because she was some feet away. ...
“I didn’t have any symptoms. But I was a little nervous. I tried to order a thermometer.” She told her family. She had gone into her office several days since March 16.
“I never got an email or notice from the university that one of our law school students tested positive for the virus. I didn’t hear anything from them until they called on March 25,” she said.
All classes at the university had transitioned to online by then. Most UMKC employees began working remotely the week of March 16, when the University of Missouri System encouraged that option. Then on March 23, UM System President Mun Choi ordered that “no one physically work” on any of the system’s four campuses. The next day, Kansas City’s metrowide stay at home orders took effect.
The university’s notice sent to the campus on March 25 said: “Today, we were informed that one of our students has tested positive for COVID-19. The student, who does not live on campus, is currently being treated in isolation, as recommended by the Kansas City Health Department.”
Lynch believes her daughter, who lives with her in Kansas City, Kansas, contracted the virus while on campus because before then “she had been at home,” Lynch said. “She didn’t go anywhere except home and to the doctor.”
The student had a pre-existing illness, her mother said, and had been feeling ill days before showing up on campus.
Law Professor Sean O’Brien said while he would have liked to have been told that the infected person was a law school student, “I do imagine there is a process that happens trying to balance student and staff confidentiality with public health, and that’s a tightrope the university has to walk. I can just imagine the legal counsel trying to figure out not just the right thing but the legal thing to do.”
Just information
Since Lynch’s daughter tested positive, two other law students also may have tested positive, according to Justice Horn, UMKC’s student body president.
Horn said he has been in touch with their parents, who don’t want information about their children’s condition made public.
Horn said he meets regularly with university leaders and is confused about why students are not being told more. He said he believes university officials know much more about cases on campus than they are sharing.
“Students do more than just stay on campus. They go out into the community, too. So this is not just a campus issue, it is a community issue,” Horn said. “It just doesn’t make any sense. It is just information.”
As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to climb, Horn said he would be surprised if there are not “many more cases” among UMKC students and faculty. Kansas City proper has 128 cases, Missouri health officials said Wednesday. Jackson County has 86.
Still, Horn said, students he has spoken to are “angry that they are not hearing from the university.“ He said that students have communicated with one another via social media, but “a lot of students look to the university” for information.
Horn, whose mother, a health care worker in South Carolina, tested positive for COVID-19, said that while students may not be getting much information about cases, they are getting good information about efforts the university and student government are taking to help students struggling during the pandemic.
On Monday, for example, the Student Government Association allocated $20,000 to the UMKC COVID-19 Emergency Fund, which provides micro grants to students struggling financially because of the virus’s spread. And they allocated $4,500 into the Kangaroo Pantry food pantry to help students.
In addition to financial help for some students, the university is allowing some students to convert grades to pass or fail, and students can get refunds for parking and the student activity fee.
The UMKC Foundation has asked for donations for emergency relief “to support our students” and to help “the university to respond to the most immediate and highest priority needs,” said an online notice about the emergency fund.
And, recognizing the growing number of hungry people due to the economic impact of the coronavirus, a team of UMKC students developed an app that connects locally owned restaurants and cafeterias that have excess food to food banks serving the needy in Kansas City.
This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
