Students in COVID-19 quarantine and isolation housing in Lawrence Tower decorate their windows. Credit: Max Garrison | Asst. Campus Editor
Ohio State’s COVID-19 positivity rate has risen over the last 24 hours to about 3.1 percent of student tested cases, up from 1.16 percent announced Tuesday, according to a Thursday universitywide email.
The email comes after a Thursday orientation meeting with new senators, where University President-elect Kristina M. Johnson said there have also been a “couple clusters” of COVID-19, according to a recording of a university senate meeting obtained by The Lantern.
The university launched its online dashboard Tuesday which shows the number of cases of COVID-19, the availability of personal protective equipment and the available capacity of quarantine and isolation housing. Ohio State planned to update the dashboard weekly.
However, Johnson said she would like to update the dashboard more frequently. Previous dashboard data included tests for students between Aug. 14 and 22 and for faculty and staff between Aug. 1 and 22.
Johnson said the university’s sample testing will increase Monday.
“We’ve already started sampling students off-campus,” Johnson said. “We’ve already seen a couple clusters in a couple places that we’re doing a lot of heavy duty contact tracing with.”
According to a universitywide email sent from Student Health Services, the university will begin testing 8,000 randomly assigned students a week at the Jesse Owens North Recreation Center. Selected students will be notified Friday.
A university spokesperson said the university has also contracted outside company Vault to manage some testing.
Vault COVID-19 tests are molecular tests, which test for the virus’ genetic material and can detect the presence of the virus within two days of infection and up to 28 days after infection, according to the company’s website. The accuracy of Vault’s tests cannot currently be determined because the lab and the company do not receive data on the patient after they are tested.
Ohio State currently conducts molecular tests which have a low false-positive rate — the likelihood of someone testing positive but not actually being infected. Molecular tests are preferred by the Food and Drug Administration and have a false-positive rate of 5 percent, according to a peer-reviewed paper in the British Medical Journal. The false-negative rate is between 2 and 37 percent.
