USD exceeds 100 COVID-19 cases since school began

Detailing what isolation looks like for those on campus

Tyler Pugmire / News Editor

The University of San Diego has been updating and sharing their COVID-19 Dashboard and has now seen a total of 126 confirmed, and 16 probable cases in the USD community since Aug. 16. These include self-reported, off-campus cases, on-campus student and employee cases, and employees working remotely.

While there is no information available to the public on contact tracing, there have been 12 cases from students living on campus. This comes two weeks after moving 500 students onto campus. 

After a student tests positive, they are sent to quarantine on a certain floor in Maher Hall, where some students are assigned to live in a single-occupancy bedroom, according to the Student Guide for Fall 2020. If a student tests positive, their meals are left in the coffee shop on campus, Aromas, for pickup. 

First-year student Jennifer McDonald tested positive twice for COVID-19 on Oct. 3 and 4, which led to an email from administration asking her to meet in the Valley circle to be picked up.

“They put me in a golf cart limo and told me to pack for ten days. I could bring whatever I wanted as long as I could take it with me in that one trip,” McDonald said.

The school has now put her in isolation in Maher Hall for ten days and has limited her social contact to no one else except for the person that knocks on her door to tell her that her meal has arrived. McDonald said that they bring three meals a day on weekdays, but only bring two during the weekends. She noted that it is nice how many snacks are provided in the meal bags.

McDonald said that they are not asking her to be tested throughout her isolation, but her temperature is checked daily. She also said that her professors have been fairly cooperative when she asks for extensions or dealing with studying during midterm season.

“The main problem is that they need a better way to check and see if we are alive,” McDonald said. “If I were to collapse, I wouldn’t be able to have anyone check in on me unless they were bringing me a meal, especially because a symptom for some people is nausea, it is not unlikely that someone could collapse and not be found for hours.”  McDonald said she has experienced severe fatigue and nausea herself.

The university is providing isolation housing for up to forty people, and all of them are in Maher Hall. 

San Diego County is currently in the red tier – the second of the state monitoring list, meaning that indoor operations of some businesses can open while enforcing social distancing: this includes restaurants, gyms, and places of worship. The county has become close to heading back into the purple tier, which would virtually eliminate all indoor operations, but a low positive test rate (3.5%) has kept the area functioning with more relaxed guidelines.

SDSU cases have been decreasing. Although they reached over 1,000 cases in September, they have now had less than 100 in the month of October. After their campus had its first outbreak, the campus shut down and begin to patrol all surrounding areas to enforce social distancing. During the peak of its cases, SDSU was responsible for more than 10% of the entire case count for all of San Diego County.

As it stands, 6.5 per 100,000 San Diegans have the virus. If that number exceeds seven, there could be stronger enforcement of social distancing. Surrounding private schools, such as Francis Parker School, a high school in Linda Vista, have returned to campus, and USD has allowed a small portion of classes to return, depending on the subject matter and preference of professor to be in person.