Tech sees COVID case increase
After two weeks of classes, Louisiana Tech University has reported a total of 219 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among students, faculty and staff this fall quarter.
The second week of reporting, which released over the weekend and covers Sept. 17-23, shows 122 new cases over that time span. That compares to the 97 cases reported from Sept. 10-16, the first full week of classes. Tech’s total enrollment this quarter has not yet been finalized but is close to 11,200, officials said.
Of the new cases in the second week, 36 are students who live on campus, 79 are students who live off campus, and seven are faculty and staff. The off-campus student total includes those who are taking 100% remote classes and those who commute to campus for in-person instruction.
All cases listed are self-reported.
Tech returned to limited in-person classes during the second session of its summer quarter after going fully online in the spring. This fall, classes are a mix of various in-person, online, and alternating hybrid formats. Campus safety rules — masks required inside buildings, gathering size limits, etc. — remain in effect.
Tech, the federal and state health departments, and the Louisiana National Guard began offering free, drive-through coronavirus testing on campus each weekday starting Sept. 14, but the positive cases reported are not exclusively from that testing, and the testing is also open to the Ruston community at large.
That testing has been extended through Friday, open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Joe Aillet Stadium parking lot near the Argent Pavilion.
Once a positive case is reported, that individual is asked to selfisolate until cleared, and if they are on campus, they may be relocated to living space that is designated for isolation. Staff and volunteers begin contact tracing to determine who else may need to quarantine based on being a close contact with the reported positive case.
“Quite a few students have now satisfied the required time frame and are now rolling off of quarantine and returning to class,” Tech President Les Guice said in a Saturday update.
Guice said the week-to-week increase of positive cases is most likely due to spread in small social gatherings and the amount of testing the university has performed.
“Our contact tracers are attributing that spread mostly to small informal social gatherings,” he said. “Our encouragement of testing is also helping to identify cases that might otherwise go undetected.”
He said staff members who lead the contact tracing efforts are often doing so on evenings and weekends.
The Louisiana Department of Health on Thursday reported a total of 1,603 self-reported cases of the virus among all higher education institutions in the state. Tech’s secondweek data is not yet included in the LDH report, which should be updated later this week.
