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 Temple’s cases today?
Temple has 61 active cases of COVID-19 as of Sept. 21. Of the cases, 60 are students and one is an employee, according to the university’s dashboard.
The university reported 73 active cases Friday.
At least six students are currently in isolation housing at Johnson and Hardwick halls, said Mark Denys, the director of Student Health Services.
How did cases change last week?
The university recorded 46 new cases during the week of Sept. 14, a slight decrease from 49 cases the week prior, according to the dashboard. Temple recorded a 4.87 percent positivity rate among those tested, a slight uptick from 4.81 percent the week before.
“Rates of positivity have been relatively steady for the last two weeks,” wrote Ray Betzner, a university spokesperson, in an email to The Temple News.
Both weeks, Temple tested close to 1000 students each.
What happened with cases in Philadelphia?
Cases in Philadelphia have generally trended downwards in the weeks after Temple moved nearly all courses online. The city averaged approximately 71 new cases a day from Sept. 7 to Sept. 20.
The previous spike in Temple cases has not affected the city’s reopening plans, said James Garrow, a spokesperson for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
“This had the potential to be a bad thing and really could have thrown the plans off track,” Garrow said. “But thanks to the university and the community for really taking the recommendations seriously.”
The zip codes 19121 and 19122, which encompass Main Campus, have recorded 1,394 positive cases combined since the start of the pandemic, according to city data.
Temple often finds out about cases before the city, Garrow said. Because many Temple students do not live in Philadelphia, the results are delayed in reaching the city’s total count, he added.
Philadelphia has recorded 35,825 confirmed cases and 1,785 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, according to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health,
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