Midway through October, Quinnipiac University has totaled 26 positive COVID-19 cases since beginning student testing on Aug. 5, according to the university dashboard.
In this time, 16,786 tests have been conducted, garnering a 0.1% positive test rate.
However, over the past seven days, the university has recorded 12 new cases, three of which came today, Oct. 16. Two of the most recent cases are from off-campus students while one is an on-campus student. The positivity rate over the past week is 0.5% which is an increase from last week’s 0.4%.
Quinnipiac remains in the yellow alert level which means the university has put “additional containment measures in place,” according to the dashboard.
“As you move from green up to red, though, it means we may change our testing model a little bit more,” said Dr. David Hill, professor of medical sciences and director of the Global Public Health program, in an Oct. 12 town hall. “So we’ve moved from testing 25% of non-residential undergraduates a few weeks ago to now testing 35% of non-residential undergraduates.”
Following the town hall, Quinnipiac made the number of active cases in isolation available via the university’s dashboard. As of today, Quinnipiac has 17 cases in isolation.
Additionally, Hill said that returning to the green alert level is still possible and ultimately the goal.
“We hope that we will (return to the green level alert),” Hill said. “We’ll look at all of the factors that I mentioned early on in this town hall, and if our case numbers begin to decline and the number of students that we have in quarantine and isolation is declining and our student health services capacity is robust and nothing has changed around us, yes we’ll certainly move back to green.”