COVID cases at NC State and UNC fall. More than 1,000 students remain on each campus.
As students from UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State leave campus dorms, both schools report sharp declines in COVID-19 case counts.
Neither school has reported a cluster of cases in nearly a week.
Combined, the two universities report that more than 2,500 students have been approved to remain on campus for the rest of the fall semester. Most undergraduates left residence halls after UNC and N.C. State announced their closure following just a few weeks of class.
New cases at N.C. State
N.C. State’s latest case count is 885 since March. Half of those were self-reported to the university, with the other half coming through testing at N.C. State’s Student Health Services building and the school’s asymptomatic surveillance program.
The available data on N.C. State’s dashboard is from Monday, Aug. 30. A university spokesperson said N.C. State is facing a backlog of test results and that updates will be made as they’re available. Testing has nearly doubled in the past week, with N.C. State reporting 7,684 tests completed since March, with a percent positive of 5.8%.
Currently, there are 1,145 students in quarantine or isolation off-campus and 118 in N.C. State’s quarantine housing units on-campus, occupying 71% of the available rooms.
No classes were held Monday or Tuesday, as the university paused activities because students were moving out of dorms, many returning home for the remainder of the semester.
Since classes began Aug. 10, N.C. State and Wake County have identified more than 30 clusters of coronavirus cases connected to the university. Initially, most were identified in fraternity and sorority houses within N.C. State’s Greek Village. Residence halls and off-campus apartment buildings have reported more clusters in the past week.
The state defines a cluster as five or more cases in close proximity.
After 10 days of classes, N.C. State moved the remainder of the fall semester to online classes for undergraduates. The school also began closing dorm rooms, allowing only students with an approved hardship to continue living on campus.
As of Monday, N.C. State said it has received 1,624 requests from students asking to stay in dorms. Of those, 1,592 have been approved.
Around the time N.C. State announced most dorm rooms would close, the school had around 6,600 students still on campus. That number is now 3,132, as students have four more days, through the end of this weekend, to move out or be granted an exception.
N.C. State pushed back its “census day” to last Friday, Aug. 28, making it the last day students could withdraw from the university for the semester and receive 90% of their tuition refunded. The university is not seeing large numbers of students withdrawing. As of last Friday, 780 undergraduates withdrew, compared to 659 by census day last year.
Graduate students at N.C. State continue to take in-person classes and the small number who live on campus, around 300, can stay in dorms. The school reports fewer graduate dropouts this year than the year before, 247 to 283 in 2019.
An N.C. State spokesperson said fraternity and sorority students living in Greek Village won’t be asked to leave.
Students returned for mostly online learning in early August.
The return of students to campuses in Raleigh has had a profound impact on Wake County’s COVID-19 numbers, with college-age people recently becoming the age group with the most positive cases.
On Friday, Wake County reported 118 new case among 18-24 year-olds.
Statewide, the return to campus is shifting data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. As of Monday, Aug. 31, 16% of the state’s total coronavirus caseload is among people ages 18-24, up two points from two weeks ago when classes started.
COVID-19 positivity rates increase among UNC students
UNC-Chapel Hill reported 16 new COVID-19 cases among students in its daily update Wednesday, bringing the university’s total to more than 900 since classes began. UNC also reported eight new student cases and three employee cases on Tuesday.
Six new cases were added to residence hall clusters on UNC’s COVID-19 dashboard Wednesday, including at Granville Towers, Morrison, Carmichael, Craige and Avery dorms. None of the cases on Tuesday were connected to campus housing. Nearly all UNC students had moved out of dorms by Monday, except for those who’d been granted exceptions.
About 1,080 students with approved hardships are still living on main campus and in Granville Towers, according to the university.
Student athletes and international students were also allowed to stay in their campus housing when UNC made the switch to online classes.
The students who remain may have to change rooms or residence halls and move from double to single rooms as UNC tries to reduce density in residential spaces.
About 650 UNC students were tested last week, and about 41% of them tested positive for COVID-19. The week before, UNC had a 34% positivity rate among students.
Those testing numbers are different than what UNC reported Monday.
The total number of students tested, last week and overall, and the negative results are both lower than what the dashboard showed. But the number of positive results remained the same, making the percent positive much higher.
UNC reported 4,938 students have been tested since February with 1,052 positive results, which is about a 21% positivity rate overall.
Since fall classes started at UNC, the positivity rate among students has more than tripled to 41%. And it has increased each week.
The return of UNC students to campus in August led to spikes in COVID-19 cases in Orange County. As of Wednesday, nearly half (47%) of Orange County’s coronavirus cases are among individuals between 18 and 24 years old.
This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 1:53 PM.
