A week since last update, the incidence rate on campus @UF continues to climb. Student Health Care (SHC) seems to have struggled w/ increased demand, testing/reporting only 135 new tests since last update (w/ 48-53% positivity rate; BUT projected to reach 70% by Mon!) (1/10)

Although the COVID Dashboard still describes the Return to Campus Initiative (R2CI) as testing those “without symptoms,” anecdotal accounts & Dashboard data suggest that students who believe they may have COVID and reach out to UF are being redirected to R2CI to ease this strain.

The rate reported today for students tested through R2CI = 18%! This suggests redirection of students from SHC, since I’ve read only about 30-40% are asymptomatic, implying if R2CI was testing ONLY students “w/o Sxs”, the true prevalence rate on campus = 2-3x higher than 18% 3/10

Today also marks the first new Faculty/Staff positive test (through R2CI) since at least 8/18, suggesting the increase in prevalence among students may have begun to raise the prevalence among UF employees who interact with them daily. And maybe most importantly… (4/10)

given the strain on UF’s testing resources at this early stage (far before we have begun to flatten the curve), it’s worth examining what resources UF is relying on to identify and quarantine students w/ COVID, & thus, to ensure the safety of its students & employees. (5/10)

Per graph, for every 1 case diagnosed & quarantined by UF in the last week, it seems 2 were identified by NON-UF clinics. As I understand the COVID Dashboard, UF is only made aware of Contact Tracing cases after non-affiliated clinics report them to the health department…

which in turn relays the info to UF who attempts to track them (& their contacts) down & place them in quarantine. Notably, 65% of cases IDed today this way WEREN’T placed in quarantine, suggesting enough delay that they’d ALREADY completed quarantine/received a negative f/u test

If it is the case that the majority of those quarantined by UF were NOT promptly identified by UF resources, but through this drawn-out process (possibly after an extended period of non-compliance w/ external doctor’s recommendation to quarantine), we have reason for concern 8/10

Given the vague wording on the Dashboard, it's possible that Contact Tracing data is a compilation of ALL sources, not just all EXTERNAL sources. Even if this is the case, >50% of quarantined cases last week were affiliates (+ their contacts) who were IDed by external providers.

Of final note, unless SHC can increase its testing capacity, my projections indicate that R2CI will soon begin identifying more cases per week than SHC, despite the selection bias involved in ostensibly testing those “w/o Sxs.”

Thanks for reading, please comment/DM w/ questions