Good, but Not Great: Taking Stock of a Big Ten University’s Covid Plan

The University of Illinois says an aggressive testing program prevented deaths on and off campus during the last academic year. Now the university is contending with the Delta variant.

This week is the start of a new academic year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. After a year and a half disrupted by a pandemic, most classes will be in classrooms again, with students and professors breathing the same air. And most people will be vaccinated. The campus last week “was just really just really thriving with excitement,” said Robert J. Jones, the university’s chancellor. “Particularly among the students that did the whole year remote last year.”