UNC Chapel Hill reports 5 infected in COVID-19 cluster. Moves testing to twice a week.
UNC-Chapel Hill reported a cluster of COVID-19 cases Saturday morning at an on-campus residence hall — the second cluster reported on campus since students and faculty returned to campus.
University officials said five people were identified as positive with COVID-19 at Avery Residence Hall. The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services defines a cluster as five or more cases in a single location, residential hall or dwelling.
UNC sent its On-Site Testing Team to the dorm on Friday to test multiple students “out of an abundance of caution to limit further spread,” a university spokesperson said in an email Saturday. The Avery dorm cases were not considered a cluster at that time.
Affected students have been identified and placed in isolation, where they are being monitored, university officials said in a post on its COVID-19 website. The Orange County Health Department also has been notified and is working with UNC officials to identify other potential exposures, the website stated.
The university announced Friday that unvaccinated students will be tested twice a week for COVID-19 starting Monday.
The university is requiring that all students, employees and visitors wear a mask while in public areas on campus, including in dormitory common areas, such as lounges and hallways. However, vaccinations are not required to be on campus.
Unvaccinated students, faculty and staff were being tested weekly for COVID-19. The message from the chancellor does not say whether unvaccinated faculty or staff will be subject to twice-a-week testing.
Masks required, cases identified
Saturday’s email noted that the university is following Orange County Health Department guidance to trace who has been within 6 feet of infected people for at least 15 minutes. It also noted that despite a large number of positive cases on campus last year, UNC officials did not see the virus spread in the classroom once in-person education restarted in the spring.
The spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether faculty and fellow students will be told if someone in their class tests positive for COVID, or to questions about how a faculty member’s potential exposure to an infected person would be handled.
“The best thing that individuals can do to reduce their personal risk is to wear a high-quality mask indoors and get vaccinated,” a UNC spokesperson said in an email Saturday. “These are highly protective measures.”
UNC reported its first COVID-19 cluster on Aug. 11 at Eshelman School of Pharmacy. The six positive cases were traced back to an event at the school just a day before thousands of students started moving into campus dorms and a week before in-person classes started.
The last available data on the UNC campus dashboard shows that nine students and three employees reported being positive with COVID-19 on Thursday, for a total of 173 positive cases this month. Two students living on campus were reported to be in isolation.
The university also reports that 88% of students and 81% of faculty and staff swore to being vaccinated before the fall semester began.
At least 500 UNC faculty, including tenured professors and teaching assistants, have petitioned the administration to move classes online for the first four to six weeks of the fall semester. UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz has said the university has “no intention of pivoting to a remote learning environment or sending our students home.”
Orange County, North Carolina cases rising
The return of a longstanding tradition also garnered some flack for the university this week when hundreds of students gathered, some without masks, for the annual first-day sip from the Old Well for good luck. The tradition was suspended last year because of COVID-19.
Critics have panned the university’s photos of students lined up together to take a drink, as well as the wisdom of allowing the tradition to continue at a time when COVID-19 cases are rising nationwide, in large part because of the more contagious delta variant.
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services is reporting that the number of hospitalizations has risen from 409 COVID-19 patients on July 9 to at least 3,147 patients as of Friday. At least 1,144,894 people in North Carolina had tested positive for the coronavirus, including 6,631 new cases reported Friday, state officials said.
Over 14,000 people have died due to COVID-19 since March 2020.
Orange County has reported 9,407 positive cases and 102 deaths since March 2020. The county’s most recent report noted that there were 446 positive cases, or 300 cases for every 100,000 people, in the last 14 days.
Roughly 30% of those cases were reported among people ages 18-24, with another 33% reported among those ages 25-49.
UNC officials said public health officials were consulted before the Old Well was reopened to students. Students who chose not to participate in the gathering were able to get bottled “well water” at several locations on campus.
This story was originally published August 21, 2021 at 11:11 AM.
