Irene Choi is a news reporter for the Vermont Cynic, where a version of this article was first published.
In just three full weeks of testing, the University of Vermont has now exceeded the total number of positive Covid-19 cases it had registered in the entire first semester.
The 64 new cases entered late Monday on the weekly UVM dashboard surpassed previous testing highs for the second week in a row. But despite the rising numbers, school officials say their policies and mitigation strategy will remain the same.
Of the 64 cases, 41 were on-campus students and 21 were off-campus, with two staff members testing positive. The student results were drawn from 11,023 total test swabs received.
That brings to 144 the number of students and staff members who have tested positive for the virus as UVM enters its fourth week of the spring semester. For the full 15-week fall semester, a total of 99 students and staff members tested positive for Covid-19.
Last week, UVM saw record-high positive case numbers as well, with 36 on-campus students testing positive and 10 off-campus.
Sunday evening, Gary Derr, VP for operations and public safety, announced that UVM has added an additional quarantine building in Mercy Hall on Trinity Campus, requiring the 62 students who had been living there to move to another area of campus.
Though cases continue to rise, the university expected positive cases would be higher this semester, spokesperson Enrique Corredera said in an email late Monday.
“As is the case in Burlington and throughout the state of Vermont, we have again seen more positives this week than we were seeing last semester,” he said. “This is something we anticipated and planned for before the start of the spring semester.”
Corredera also indicated in the email that no changes or further restrictions would be made within the current safety protocol except for the increased quarantine space.
“We will continue working in partnership with public health and infectious disease experts, and we will monitor the situation closely to determine if any additional adjustments are needed,” Corredera said.
Even if new variants of the virus are found on campus, UVM’s current safety measures will not change, but will require “strict adherence to masking and distancing guidelines,” he said.
The university has not provided a specific threshold for potential closure since the beginning of the year despite multiple requests from the Cynic. Corredera points to UVM’s low positivity rate of less than half a percent compared to Vermont’s seven-day average of 1.6%.
