“I think the trends are troubling,” Joshua Wynne, head of the NDUS Smart Restart task force and dean of the UND medical school, said during a task force meeting Thursday, Aug. 27.
Turnout for testing that was meant to “try to preclude a major outbreak on one of the campuses” was “disappointing,” Wynne said.
“I think it means that many students may be at risk of transmitting the disease because they don’t know it, and we don’t know it because effective testing has not been done,” he said.
Testing, while highly encouraged by the system and campuses, was not required for students.
The state, planning for high volumes of testing, allocated more than 28,000 tests for the university system, according to Vern Dosch, the North Dakota contact tracing administrator. In total, about 13,000 people were tested on college campuses, including students, faculty, staff and the general public.
“Our expectations for the participation of the students was considerably higher than that it was,” said Dosch, a major player in the planning of the university system’s testing project.
There were 42 testing sites planned to specifically tailor to college populations, Dosch said. Additionally, much of the state lab’s capacity was moved to create room for the university system testing. Testing requirements for long-term care were moved to a third-party lab for the two- to three-week time frame so there was as much capacity as possible to test the college population.
Meanwhile, active cases of COVID-19 are increasing across North Dakota, particularly in the Bismarck and Grand Forks areas. Burleigh and Morton counties have reported 418 and 115 active cases, respectively. Grand Forks County, which reported 76 new active cases on Thursday, Aug. 27, most of which are believed to be tied to UND and the recent return of students. The county now has 442 active positives, 86% of those cases are between the ages of 15 and 29.
Across the state, there are 1,995 active cases of COVID-19, including 655 positives in the 20-29 age group and 249 in the 15-19 age group. The positivity rate for new cases across the state is approaching 5%.
Dr. Paul Carson, director of the North Dakota State University Center for Immunization Research and Education, said the increased positive cases were not unexpected, given the number of people that would be traveling from different places and bringing the virus with them.
“I’m pleased that we found a chunk of them and, hopefully, that's interdicting a number of potential transitions,” he said. “We certainly would have liked to see more people tested.”
And while testing numbers were low, Carson said the cases identified may have been stopped quickly before massive spread becomes a major issue.
“That exponential growth (that was) hopefully prevented is still substantial and we really appreciate massive efforts you guys did,” Carson said. “That actually may have interdicted potentially thousands (of people) within a couple of weeks … being exposed, isolated and quarantined.”
Wynne expressed concerns that the combined low percentage of students who were tested and a potentially similar 5% positivity rate for schools could create a problem for the system.
“I think that, if it’s true that a similar positivity rate is in fact present in the students not tested, Houston, we have a problem,” he said.
The system is now considering how it moves forward with its second phase of testing.
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August 28, 2020 at 02:00AM
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North Dakota's universities see low testing turnout - The Dickinson Press
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