Each week, The Temple News will provide a brief breakdown on COVID-19 trends and cases at Temple University.
Case counts include students registered at any of Temple’s Philadelphia-area campuses, according to the university’s case dashboard.
Here’s what happened this week:
What happened with Temple cases today?
Temple has 54 active cases of COVID-19 among students as of Oct. 5, according to the dashboard.
Temple nearly doubled its testing from 677 tests last week to 1,258 tests this week, according to the dashboard.
“Most of the increase was related to the testing of students living in the residence halls as they start to consolidate,” wrote Mark Denys, director of Student Health Services, in an email to The Temple News.
Temple moved students living in White Hall, 1940 Residence Hall and Temple Towers to 1300 Residence Hall, Morgan Hall and Beech International Village to limit the number of residence halls open on campus, The Temple News reported.
How did cases change last week?
The university recorded 39 new COVID-19 cases during the week of Sept. 28, a slight decrease from 41 cases the week prior, according to the dashboard.
Temple recorded a 3.10 percent positivity rate among those tested this week, down from 6.06 percent the week before, according to the dashboard.
The overall positivity rate among those tested at Temple since March 10 is 4.43 percent, according to the dashboard.
What happened with cases in Philadelphia?
Philadelphia recorded 69 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, down from 143 on Sept. 30. The city averaged 93 new cases from Sept. 19 to Oct. 3, according to city data. The city averaged 87 new cases from Sept. 12 to Sept. 26.
“We are currently investigating to see if there is a section of the city that is more heavily affected, but our epidemiologists and contact tracing staff acknowledge that colleges and universities throughout the city continue to see cases,” wrote James Garrow, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, in an email to The Temple News.
The ZIP codes 19121 and 19122, which encompass Main Campus, have recorded 1,551 positive cases combined since the start of the pandemic and 45 deaths, according to city data.
Philadelphia has recorded 37,807 confirmed cases and 1,816 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
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