@rbc2018 Thanks for that! Is there a website where I can access that info? What were you averaging prior to Tech’s move in?
@GKUnion The Virginia Department of Health is searchable by locality. You can see that until late August we were averaging fewer than 5 cases per day. So yeah, it’s been a pretty drastic change in the last few weeks.
https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/coronavirus/covid-19-in-virginia-locality/
@GKUnion You can kinda-sorta try to determine off campus student test info via the VDH Coronavirus site.
Any student who tests through Schiffert, regardless of where they reside, is categorized under the VT Dashboard. So those results include on and off campus tests. The Schiffert data is combined with all other test results for the locality, which is what you will find on the VDH site. Your best data is accessible by drilling down in the VDH site via the “data download” tab which is just below the “daily dashboard” graphics… There you can search by zip code (all of Blacksburg’s results are under 24060). In any VDH search result you are going to get non-student records, but if you do the County sized search you will likely be capturing a much larger portion of non-student results. I’m sure there are some students who live outside Blacksburg, but a much larger student population will be in that 24060 group.
FWIW, yesterday Student Affairs mentioned something to me re: doing a walk up testing clinic at Lane. Not sure if this is an ongoing thing as part of surveillance or what. I know 6 students who fell into the “possible exposure” category who were able to do walk-in at Schiffert on Saturday and their results came back Tuesday (all negative).
Yes, looking at 24060 rather than all of Montgomery County is useful. As of today 24060 makes up 80% of all Montgomery County cases (but is less than 50% of the population). I can tell you that a lot of discussions at the county level (especially for K-12 schools) revolve around students returning, student cases, student spread, etc.
Schiffert is down to about 10% positives this week … so looks like they may be past their spike.
2000 testing appointments available per week, pooled testing approved and proceeding, prevalence testing program starts Monday:
https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2020/09/president-message-091820.html
@ShenVal18 That is very good news, but parents should prepare themselves for a significant spike in reported positive cases over the next two weeks.
VT Quarantined students down to 118 now as spike seems to have subsided on-campus
FYI - looks like UVA is starting its spike with 52 cases then 60 cases last 2 days reported.
They stepped up testing yesterday. The 638 tests administered returned 46 positive cases. Hopefully parents understand that this is to be expected.
I’m glad they are randomly testing off-campus students. The more data the better, especially since it is a small community.
@GKUnion The two big numbers of administered tests this week are likely from the walk-up testing at Lane that they started last Sunday (and extended into Monday). They are doing walk-up again this Sunday and it looks like that may be an ongoing thing. We should start to see number of tests in the 100’s daily starting about midweek next week if my math is correct re: when first round of random testing starts reporting.
Positivity % is trending downwards which is nice. Was down there a week ago and very pleased to see pretty much 100% mask use by students outdoors.
Local K-12 schools are returning to hybrid (partially in-person) instruction starting Monday, so the view at the county level is that things have improved. This is echoed by statements at the university and town level. Good news!
Down to an 8% positive rate from a high of 19%. More importantly the students in quarantine down to 76.
Some statistics for those other places acting as though UVA doing better at COVID maintance
VT - 976 positives - 9300 on campus students = 10.4%
UVA - 728 positives - 7191 on campus students = 10.1%
VT faculty and students 38453 = 2.53%
UVA faculty and students 28283 = 2.57%
Both pretty similiar numbers experiencing.
Radford started 2 weeks before VT, had a spike, smug reactions from VT.
VT started 2 weeks before UVA, had a spike, smug reactions from UVA.
UVA started…and here comes the spike!
yea Kinda way it is - I do have to say UVA hasn’t had as large of a spike but more drawn out.
Of course there is always JMU to make everyone feel better.
True. And NC State. And UNC.
Haha! Keep in mind, JMU aggregates and reports off campus cases. Neither VT nor UVA have been transparent like JMU.
VT - 976 positives - 9300 on campus students = 10.4%
UVA - 728 positives - 7191 on campus students = 10.1%
JMU - 629 positives - 6982 on campus students = 9.0%
Off campus students account for 57.4% of JMU’s reported cases.
Virginia Tech has 65% of its students living off campus, while JMU’s percentage is 68%.
Does anyone think there aren’t a significant number of unreported cases among the VT off campus community. Why wouldn’t they track and report them?
I’m paying attention to several VA schools for S22 and few have impressed me in terms of testing and reporting, so the last thing any school should be is smug.
Oh I wasn’t endorsing the smugness, just found it amusing (what goes around comes around essentially). The truth is, they are all trying to handle it as best they can, communicate things in the best possible light, and keep campus open. Some schools obviously didn’t feel comfortable keeping campus open, whether because of an impending increase in cases, not enough quarantine space, cautiousness, etc. Who knows. I actually don’t fault any of them for their decisions at this point, since there are so many unknowns. My kid is rather cynical about the truthfulness of the VT data (since a lot of friends have been turned away from Schiffert testing because their symptoms weren’t deemed substantial enough). I do think there are a lot of unreported cases off campus, but hopefully only with minor symptoms.
I wish I could both “agree” and “like” this post…