UTSA launches COVID-19 dashboard to track cases and on-campus isolation and quarantine

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Robyn Castro

Photo by Robyn Castro

Josh Peck, News Editor

UTSA recently launched a COVID-19 dashboard to provide the number of positive COVID-19 cases among students, faculty, staff and others affiliated with the university that have a direct campus impact, as well as the number of students in on-campus isolation. There are six total reported cases as of Sept. 9. 

The dashboard is updated every weekday by 4:00 p.m., and its data is cumulative since Aug. 24, the first day of the Fall 2020 semester. Five students and one faculty/staff member have tested positive for COVID-19. The dashboard does not make a distinction between faculty and staff. There are six students either quarantining or isolating in on-campus housing as of Sept. 9.

Students living in campus housing are placed in quarantine if they have had close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 but they themselves have not presented COVID-19 symptoms. These students must quarantine for 14 days in the housing unit they are living in. Students living in campus housing are placed in isolation if they report COVID-19-related symptoms or test positive. These students will be relocated to a separate housing unit within 24 hours and must remain there for 10 days, have no fever for 24 hours without using fever-reducing medication and show improvements of COVID-19 symptoms before they can be released from isolation. There are hundreds of rooms set aside for quarantining and isolation of students, according to a university spokesperson. 

There are approximately 2,300 students living in on-campus housing, according to a university spokesperson. 1,027 students live in university-owned housing, and the remainder live in Chisholm Hall and University Oaks, the two housing complexes owned by Campus Living Villages.