Auburn reports first drop in COVID-19 cases

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Auburn reports first drop in COVID-19 cases

By Giana Han

4-5 minutes

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Auburn University announced it had 109 newly reported COVID-19 cases for the week of September 7-13, with the data displayed on a new website.

The original site that contained the newly reported cases chart now contains three hyperlinks to the “Covid-19 Health and Exposure Updates,” “Previously Reported Campus-specific COVID_19 Data” and the “COVID-19 Resource Center.” It is the latest in an ever-changing system for reporting the data.

In the new location for the COVID-19 information, Auburn includes a graph that shows how the number of cases has changed over time. Below that, there is a chart with the number of cases at various Auburn sites as well as the total number of cases. Another graph, this one depicting Auburn’s positivity rate for its sentinel testing, is below that, followed by links to other resources. The graphs do not include data from the week before classes or the first week of classes.

This is the first drop Auburn has reported since its students returned for class. Before the first week of class, Auburn reported 41 cases. That increased to 208 cases after the first week, then 517. After the end of the third week, it reported 598 new cases for a total of 1,382 new cases since class had started and 1,761 since it first started testing in March. With the newest data, Auburn has a total of 1,870 reported cases since it started testing and 1,491 since August 17.

“It didn’t just go down because testing went down,” Auburn Medical Clinic Director Fred Kam said. “It went down because, again, all of the steps people have been taking and adhering to.”

Out of Auburn’s newest cases, 108 are from the main campus while one is from the AU Airport. The chart does not designate how many cases are students and how many are employees. Auburn gave 329 tests through its sentinel testing program and came back with a positivity rate of 1.8 percent, down from 6.4 percent the week before.

“This actually wasn’t a surprise," Kam said. "I was expecting these numbers to go down this week. Again, I want to be clear, it’s not going to last forever. Because of Labor Day, we expect a slight spike.”

Auburn’s system for counting the new cases remains the same as it was the week before. They are counted from “self-reported data (including data from current students, employees, and third-party contractors) who report testing positive for COVID-19, regardless of testing location; and on-campus sentinel testing provided through the GuideSafe™ Platform.” This system was changed from the way the data was counted before and during the week of August 22-28. Auburn also no longer counts its data from Saturday to Friday and now counts it from Monday to Sunday, so the numbers on the site look different than what was previously reported.

Auburn requires its students, faculty, staff and third-party contractors to report if they’ve tested positive through a confidential self-report form. It says this “enables the university to help reduce exposure among the campus community by providing necessary contact tracing and follow-up care.”

“Some schools are not as lucky as we are,” Kam said. “Some are all online ... if we can just stick to what has worked and continues to work, we will position ourselves to finish a very successful fall semester."

[WarTim 3,525]

Good news. Thanks