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Resuming In-Person Classes under COVID-19: Evaluating Assigned Seating Protocols in Limiting Contacts at Postsecondary Institutions

In order to limit the spread of COVID-19, Canadian postsecondary institutions are offering the majority of classes online for the 2020-21 academic year. The goal of Canada's public health pandemic response is to reduce severe illness and mortality from COVID-19 while minimizing social disruption. To achieve this goal, post secondary institutions need practical tools to limit COVID-19 spread and facilitate contact tracing while returning students to in-person instruction. In this paper, we explore the impact of assigned seating for students attending in-person classes in reducing potential contacts. We conduct a variety of seating simulations using student enrollment data and measure the number of potential contacts under each scenario. We find that assigning seats to students significantly reduces the expected number of contacts relative to random seating, making the return to in-person classes more feasible under these scenarios.