Fifteen additional SUNY New Paltz students have tested positive for COVID-19, as the College conducted more than 3,000 on-campus tests (about four times the average weekly number of tests conducted this fall) during Test Before You Go testing from Nov. 16-20.
Twelve of these students live off campus, and three live on campus. Fourteen are isolating off campus, and one is isolating on campus.
Thirteen of these students were tested on campus. The other two students submitted test results from off-campus facilities.
The College’s on-campus test positivity rate for the fall 2020 semester stands at 0.26% following last week’s Test Before You Go efforts. The College has performed 10,225 on-campus COVID-19 tests to date since the semester began.
A total of 46 students and six employees in our on-campus population have had confirmed or presumed positive cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the fall 2020 semester. Twenty-two cases are currently classified as active. Ten students are currently in quarantine on campus, and one is in isolation on campus.
According to the College’s Testing and Quarantine procedure for fall 2020, contact tracers are immediately deployed to interview any students who test positive about where they have been and with whom they have been in contact. Contact tracers will notify other individuals as appropriate, and will also notify Facilities Management if COVID-19-positive students have been in common spaces on campus within the last seven days.
All faculty teaching courses in which students who test positive for COVID-19 are enrolled will be notified, whether those courses are in-person, remote or hybrid.
State and local health departments have been notified of this confirmed case, per state requirements.
Our community can stay up-to-date via our COVID-19 dashboard, which includes tallies of current active cases, total cases last week, total recoveries, data on on-campus student testing and positivity rates for those on-campus tests, and information about students quarantining and isolating on campus.
This dashboard does not include counts of positive cases among students taking online courses from home, or employees who are telecommuting and not coming to campus, as any such cases should not pose an on-campus health risk.
As previously announced, the College will continue reporting new positive cases of COVID-19 to community members through the Daily Digest e-newsletter. Each issue of the Digest will include a “Coronavirus Update” announcing new, confirmed positive cases among students or employees, if any.
Use this link for more details about our coronavirus communication protocol for fall 2020.
