Investigation sheds light on U of M cases
At the University of Memphis, 135 students tested positive during August and September, according to information reviewed by the health department, David Sweat, deputy director of the health department, said Thursday.
The cases among athletes are included in the 135 student cases reported to the health department, but the total includes other cases as well.
The cases had already been reported by laboratories, Sweat said, as is required by law.
“What we did not realize was their affiliation with the university. That was not apparent — you can’t tell from a laboratory report that that’s the case,” Sweat said. He then stressed the importance of organizations to help the health department “connect the dots.”
“Now, as we’ve gotten that information from the University of Memphis digging into the clusters and investigations that were going on there, we got an expanded spreadsheet that lists the affiliations of these students with the university and that makes it easier for us to follow up and hone our questions in our interviews with our students,” Sweat said.
U of M releases new report, says 21 cases are ‘on campus’
In its weekly COVID-19 case report released Thursday, the University of Memphis said there are 21 cases of COVID-19 among students “on campus” and no cases of COVID-19 among staff on campus. The university removed categories that report active COVID-19 cases among all students and all staff, which had been included in previous weekly reports.
The university did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether it would again report all active cases, or whether the 135 cases reported by the health department are reflected in the Thursday report.
It is unclear how or if the university is including the cases it has reported among its athletes and whether those would be classified as “on campus” cases.
According to the weekly COVID-19 report, the university maintains no staff member or student contracted a case of COVID-19 on its campus.
Sweat did not have the number of active cases — cases diagnosed within the last 14 days — among the 135 students on hand during the press conference. The Commercial Appeal has submitted a follow-up inquiry to the department.
“The main thing is that we are getting a good flow of information now between the University of Memphis and the health department and that we’re working to complete that investigation as expeditiously as we can,” he said.
Health department updating tools to investigate case clusters
The Shelby County Health Department has developed new interviewing tools to more quickly identify clusters, Alisa Haushalter, director of the department, said Thursday.
Case containment continues to be critical to returning to business and school, she said.
“One of the limits of the data collection system in the state of Tennessee but that impacts Shelby County is there’s a challenge in being able to identify and associate a case with a specific location,” Haushalter said. “Our team really has worked diligently to provide not only accurate data to Shelby County but also very robust data.”
The health department receives reports of student cases when the students lists their address as within Shelby County, Sweat said in an email to The Commercial Appeal on Friday. If the student lists a home address outside of Memphis, the case will first be referred to that jurisdiction, he said.
“If the student claims an out-of-jurisdiction address and their investigation finds the connection to Memphis the case will be transferred to us,” Sweat said in the email, adding that the university will also inform the health department of positive student cases.
“Finally, if the University learns of a positive case among students they will also inform us,” he said.
Wednesday, the Shelby County Health Department reported it was investigating two clusters among 46 people associated with the university’s athletics programs.
Among those clusters, four COVID-19 cases are associated with U of M’s pom and cheer squad, according to the health department. The other 42 cases are part of another cluster, which the health department has said is related to the football program. Neither the department nor the U of M has said how many members of the football program are among the cases.
U of M athletics released a statement later Wednesday: “In total since June 5, the athletic department has conducted over 3500 COVID-19 tests and has had 81 positive results, with 46 being considered active. All others have fully recovered. Due to privacy concerns, names will not be released, and impacted sports will not be identified. However, a recent report that attributed 42 current cases to the football program is significantly overstated.”
The statement confirmed the 46 cases among athletics and also included full COVID-19 testing numbers for the first time since athletes returned to campus for voluntary workouts in June.
There have been 81 total positive tests associated with the athletics program since June, including the 46 active cases, per the statement.
What changed in U of M’s new weekly report
In a new category, the university is reporting the “active exposures” it is monitoring. There are 27 active exposures among faculty and 64 active exposures among students, per the report.
It is unclear how the university defines an exposure or how that definition might compare to the traditional definition of a “close contact,” which public health typically describes as any person who has come within six feet of a known case for 15 minutes.
The university did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the definition of an exposure.
According to the report: h Among students, there were 176 cumulative COVID-19 cases since March. It had previously reported them since April. The university is also now reporting 183 cumulative exposures among students since March.
h Among staff, there were 116 cumulative COVID-19 exposures, the same as it was in the Sept. 9 report. The category now reflects exposures since March instead of April.
h Also among staff, there were 38 cumulative cases since March, the same number of active COVID-19 cases among staff the university reported in its Sept. 9 report.
h The school expanded its quarantine dorm rooms to 100 from 85. There are 27 students in quarantine rooms.
h There are 1,832 students living in on-campus housing.
h The report does not include information about tests administered at the university.
U of M spokesperson Chuck Gallina has previously said about 500 students are eligible for on-campus courses.
Tuesday, the university delayed a planned partial return to campus originally scheduled for Sept. 21.
Athletes, as well as U of M’s band, have been regularly tested for COVID-19, Provost Tom Nenon has said. Friday, he said the current daily demand for oncampus testing among students, staff or faculty members is about 30.
In its Wednesday statement, U of M athletics said it has administered 3,500 tests since June.
How other universities report COVID-19 data
Other universities in Tennessee have been reporting COVID-19 cases among campus community members in regularly updated dashboards.
In Nashville, Vanderbilt University issues a weekly report of tests administered among its campus population.
The University of Tennessee at Knoxville issues daily updates to its dashboard. The dashboard reflects active cases, people who are in isolation or quarantine and clusters, identified by the cluster’s point of origin.