COVID-19 Update and a New Dashboard, Sept. 3, 2020
Good afternoon,
Thank you all for helping us get the year started on a positive note. Our continued goal is help students move through fall semester and complete their studies, and most importantly – to stay healthy.
I hope you have had a chance to review our weekly COVID-19 dashboard. You may have noticed some changes from last week’s dashboard. The updated information reflects a few changes in the data the System Office and Minnesota Department of Health have asked us to report, and I wanted to put those numbers in context.
- A new data point that the System Office asked us to begin tracking on our dashboard is the current active student cases with self-reported campus contact. That total is 56 this week. Those are cases where a person tested positive and reported to contact tracers that they had recently been on campus prior to testing positive. I think you can see why those are the cases that are most concerning for our campus community.
- We are also sharing the total number of students with active, self-reported cases. The current number of self-reported, active cases among all of our students is 128, or less than one percent of our total unduplicated student headcount. This number includes those who reported to us they tested positive. Some of those cases have been confirmed with the Minnesota Department of Health and others have not. That number could change and we will update it frequently. It is an increase from 31 last week.
- We are also reporting our on-campus quarantine and isolation data. This number on the dashboard indicates how many of our dedicated quarantine/isolation beds on campus are occupied: 13 of 97 available beds. The second number, 27, is the total number of students on campus in quarantine and isolation. That includes students in dedicated beds plus those that are able to quarantine within their existing housing location.
The increase in these numbers is concerning, and I encourage everyone on to continue following the rules we have in place under our current Yellow COVID-19 safety status level. I would also again ask that everyone continue to avoid situations where others are not being safe.
If you have questions about the dashboard numbers or about anything else, please contact Interim Provost Matt Cecil at provost@mnsu.edu. I look forward to keeping you updated with brief reports from time to time.
In closing, thank you for working so hard during this second week of classes. I could not be prouder of the way our campus community has all pulled together. Thank you.
Richard Davenport
President
