USC adds 210 new coronavirus cases as active cases nearly triple in two days
Cases of COVID-19 continue to spike among students at the University of South Carolina, as total active cases have nearly tripled in two days and increased almost sixfold since the start of the week.
The school released updated data to its coronavirus dashboard on Friday, with a high of 210 new cases being added Thursday for a total of 557 active cases. The dashboard also recorded 169 new cases Wednesday and 97 Tuesday. On Monday, the university had no new cases and just 94 total active cases.
A sixth sorority houses in the university’s Greek Village has also been quarantined after several people tested positive for the virus in each house.
Of the 557 active cases, all but four are among students, according to the dashboard. According to an update sent Friday by the university, all of the cases among students have been asymptomatic or mild, requiring no hospitalizations.
USC is reporting 10,485 tests since Aug. 1, with 7.6% of those tests coming back positive. More recently, the percentage of positive tests has exceeded 13%.
These increases come just one day after President Bob Caslen told the university’s board of trustees that an additional 191 people had tested positive Wednesday, a figure he called unacceptable and unsustainable for the school’s reopening plan.
“We could look at shutdown options,” if cases continue to increase, Caslen said. “I’m not prepared to drop the health of the entire student body on the city of Columbia.”
However, Caslen wrote to students Friday that he remains “committed to ensuring in-person classes are held.”
“While this week’s rise in the number of positive COVID cases concerns me, we always knew that there would be a rise in cases once the entire campus community returned. Fortunately, all of our cases to date have been minor and our key dashboard indicators are well within the modeled parameters,” Caslen said.
School officials have defended the safety of classrooms since campus reopened but warned that issues have arisen because of off-campus gatherings, including parties, that lack social distancing and face masks.
People who host parties or break quarantine to go to parties will be suspended, administrators have warned.
As of Thursday, 35.1% of the school’s quarantine and isolation spaces are in use. The campus’s alert level has risen from “new normal” to “low,” meaning there will be increased testing, contact tracing, environmental monitoring and facility cleaning.
This story was originally published August 28, 2020 at 5:50 PM.
