USC coronavirus cases decrease while number of tests increase

Active coronavirus cases on the University of South Carolina’s campus have decreased by seven since case numbers were last reported earlier this week.

While a decrease of seven may seem like a modest decrease, the school conducted nearly twice as many tests between Tuesday and Thursday as it did from last Friday to this Monday.

As of Friday, USC is reporting 88 active cases on campus. Tuesday, when USC last reported case numbers, there were 95 active cases.

The numbers on USC’s dashboard indicate COVID-19 is receding from campus. USC has 96% of its quarantine capacity available, and of the 1,560 tests the school conducted between Tuesday and Thursday, only .7% of them were positive.

USC’s cases have been falling in recent weeks, but the school has raised concerns about not enough students who have coronavirus — especially male students — getting tested for COVID-19. USC officials, who say the school has plenty of testing capacity, has urged students who have COVID-19 symptoms to get tested.

There are a couple possible reasons for why USC’s case numbers have been decreasing. One is that students, caught up with more demanding school work as the semester progresses, have been spending more time studying and less time partying. Another is that students aren’t getting tested and riding out the relatively mild symptoms on their own at home.

The campus alert level, a composite score of case numbers, testing and quarantine capacity, coronavirus’ impact on day-to-day operations and more, describes the coronavirus risk on USC’s campus as “new normal,” the least severe category.

Since school began Aug. 20, the peak number of reported active cases has been 1,461 on Sept. 3, according to USC’s online dashboard.

The lion’s share of those cases have been students. Between Aug. 1 and Sept. 21, 98.3% of all COVID-19 cases on USC’s campus has been students, according to the dashboard.

Around the time the peak was reported, testing declined rapidly because USC said a lab staffer key to saliva testing became sick, which caused saliva testing to fall to one-sixth of its previous capacity.

Naturally, fewer tests showed fewer positives, but the percent positive rates were also down shortly after the spike.

While cases rose early in the year, USC officials remained publicly confident in the school’s ability to test, quarantine and do contact tracing, according to a Sept. 1 article from The State.

USC President Robert Caslen has been calling for students who have symptoms to get tested, in part to prevent or minimize COVID-19 spread to other parts of Columbia. Caslen recently said he wants to test all students before Thanksgiving break.

This story was originally published September 25, 2020 at 5:16 PM.