Texas campuses see jump in virus cases

Students at a Baylor University dormitory are required to “reside in place” after a spike in positive coronavirus cases in a campus residence hall.

Baylor officials wrote in a letter to the community that the number of positive COVID-19 cases within Martin Hall increased from five to 21 cases within three days. All Martin Hall residents on the two affected floors — about 80 of 250 students — were notified about the next steps and university officials asked students to not leave their respective floor.

Other Texas campuses also saw an increase of positive cases following the return to campus in mid-August.

Two people living in the Jester and San Jacinto residence halls at the University of Texas at Austin have tested positive, according to UT spokesman J.B. Bird. Since the beginning of August, 37 positive cases have been reported at UT.

The two have been isolating and public health workers have reached out to any close contacts and advised them to get tested, Bird said.

“Based on the timing of these cases, they would appear to be cases that fall into that time frame of when people came back to school,” Bird said.

Since dorms opened on Aug. 20, eight students and five UT faculty and staff members have tested positive for COVID-19, but it is unclear how many of those individuals live in on-campus facilities or are working on campus.

The UT flagship has reported 493 COVID-19 cases since March 1

on its dashboard, which tracks the number of cases of the virus.

Baylor now plans to conduct daily rapid testing and assessment of symptoms and complete contact tracing. All positive cases have been isolated and are no longer in the dorm, university officials said. And residents on other floors were asked to not visit any of the upper floors and to contact Baylor Health Services to schedule COVID-19 testing.

In the meantime, Baylor also hopes to “tailor its response” to the outbreak without requiring a full quarantine for the residence hall. It launched “weekly surveillance testing” Monday, which will conduct ongoing testing of 5 percent of the campus at random.

The outbreak is just a fragment of the 645 positive cases at Baylor since the beginning of August, according to the university’s dashboard. The dashboard, updated daily at 3 p.m., showed that of those cases more than 450 are still active, and about 400 of those cases were produced in the last week.

Baylor spokeswoman Lori Fogelman said in an email that some of the positive cases noted are results from mandatory testing that occurred from before the semester began and nearly all cases have occurred off-campus. The school required all students, faculty and staff to submit a negative test before returning for the semester and received around 20,000 results with a positivity rate of less than 1 percent.

“That means we were able to keep around 130 positive COVID-19 cases away from campus for the beginning of the semester, while also obtaining good baseline data for our ongoing mitigation efforts,” Fogelman said.

Additionally, Fogelman said the dashboard numbers represent about 2 percent of the community.

Baylor anticipated an increase in cases as the semester began, but expects a decline in the days ahead as random testing begins for everyone, not just symptomatic students, Fogelman said.

Kevin Jackson, Baylor’s vice president for student life, said in an email to students on Aug. 25 — just a day after classes began — that nearly all positive COVID-19 cases at the university came from activities and interactions among students living off-campus.

The school received reports of two off-campus parties near campus last week despite restrictions that prohibit gatherings of more than 10 people. At least one student who attended one of these gatherings has tested positive. As a result, several students are on interim suspension and at least one student organization has been suspended.

Other college campus have similarly publicized their positive COVID-19 cases, although the methods of reporting vary.

As of Monday afternoon, Houston-area colleges have reported the following cases in August:

• Prairie View A&M University: reported 58 positive cases, most of which have occurred since the mid-month return back to campus.

• Texas A&M University: reported 54 positive cases — 47 of the cases were from students from Aug. 1-17. The College Station flagship is working to produce a dashboard that will report COVID-19 cases.

• Sam Houston State University: Of the 140 positive cases at the Huntsville college, 52 were reported in August alone. Forty positive cases have emerged since Aug. 17, Sam Houston State’s first day of classes.

• University of Houston: The UH dashboard showed a total of 25 positive cases — seven of which were on campus.

• Rice University: Of more than 9,000 people tested since the beginning of August, 10 students and six staff have tested positive, according to the Rice website. The college also reported that 28 people within its community are being quarantined — more than half of whom are off-campus — and 15 people are being isolated off-campus.