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 its case dashboard.
Here’s what happened this week:
What happened with active cases?
Active COVID-19 cases dropped from 253 reported last Friday to just 70 reported today. Active cases on campus have been declining since last Tuesday. Sixty-nine of the cases are students, while one is an employee. Every infected student was in a campus facility at the time they were infectious, while the infected employee was not.
Why the large drop?
Cases are removed 10 days after an individual’s symptoms first appeared, 24 hours after their last fever without the use of fever-reducing medication and when other symptoms have improved, according to the university’s active case dashboard. When more students who tested positive report being asymptomatic than new students who test positive in a given day, the active case count drops.
“It’s a combination of students ending their active period in isolation and a relatively lower percentage of positive cases among those we’re testing now,” wrote Ray Betzner, a spokesperson for the university, in an email to The Temple News. “Overall, it’s a very positive pattern.”
And how were cases last week overall?
The university reported 49 new cases the week of Sept. 7, a sharp decline from 211 the week before. The positivity rate among those tested also dropped from 10.12 to 4.82 percent.
How does this compare to total Philadelphia cases?
Cases in the city have generally remained relatively flat since last week, but are lower than they were at the height of Temple’s outbreak earlier this month.
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