Logan Ramsey
News Editor
After consistently rising for a consecutive six weeks, Idaho State University’s COVID-19 positive case count leveled off in the reporting period of Oct. 7-13 at 68 new cases. The week previous saw 69 new cases.
Of the newest cases, 24 were confirmed and another 44 of them probable, meaning that they’ve shown symptoms but have a pending test or haven’t been tested yet. The unusually high number of probable cases could possibly be attributed to test backlog. It could also be attributed to a high number of individuals with symptoms reporting their symptoms late in the period.
While Rex Force, Vice President for Health Sciences, finds this encouraging, he also said one week is not enough time to constitute a trend. ISU doesn’t have the outbreak under control yet, so, “now is the time to remain vigilant.”
“There are so many factors that affect spread that are not in our control, that it would be difficult for me to say that we have it under control,” Force said.
However, ISU does have the on-campus spread of COVID-19 under control. Thanks to preventative measures that Force said the university community is following well, there’s been little on-campus spread.
The majority of new cases are coming from off-campus activities. With most of the case clusters confirmed on campus, there’s been a source case that was infected off-campus. That source case then infects more people through person-to-person contact.
Thanks to social distancing, there have been few cases spread in classrooms.
Although case clusters have been common in student housing, it’s not what Force would call “widespread.” In the two most recent reporting periods, there haven’t been any new clusters reported in housing.
Most recently, one cluster was identified in the Early Learning Center on the Idaho Falls campus, with three clusters on the Pocatello campus. Three cases were reported in the College of Technology, two in the College of Health and at least one cluster in Athletics. The previous reporting period also saw a cluster in Athletics. All of the current clusters on the Pocatello campus are under investigation by the contact tracing team.
Since the start of the school year, only three clusters have been identified in housing, in addition to three cases confirmed without known contact between each other. The most clusters have been identified in the College of Technology, with four total. In addition, there’s been two clusters identified among staff, two in the Division of Health Sciences, one in the College of Health, one in the College of Arts & Letters and at least three in Athletics.
Force said that there’s no question that people are experiencing COVID-19 fatigue.
“We’ve been talking about this since March and people are sick of it. They’re sick of hearing about it everywhere they turn. They’re sick of wearing face coverings. That’s human nature,” Force said.
However, Force maintains the importance everyone on and off campus following public health guidelines.
“We cannot squash this without all of the preventative measures, but just as important, is if people think they’re sick, we’ve got to limit the spread, and we’ve got to take individual responsibility to help with this,” Force said.
This is why Force said ISU President Kevin Satterlee updated the campus social distancing guidelines, to “redouble our efforts.”
“Our collective hard work over the last seven months to provide in-person courses has allowed us to operate as we have this Fall. However, due to the increase in cases in our communities, which has contributed to on-campus spread, we need to make adjustments,” Satterlee said in his statement.
While the university didn’t change its operational level from yellow, it did decide that only, “critical, mission-congruent events may be planned and held.” Only ten individuals are allowed in attendance at events.
“Any programs that have seen a spread of the virus through the “close contact” nature of the class have been notified and either isolated or quarantined. These have not spread to, nor been attributed to, our normal face-to-face courses,” Satterlee said.
Force said that anyone who displays symptoms of COVID-19 should isolate and seek guidance from health officials.
“Unless we have better adherence to those strategies we’re gonna continue to see disease spread,” Force said.
The latest COVID-19 positive case numbers will be available at isu.edu/roaringback/ the evening this story is published.
