14-person decrease from previous reporting period
Jacqueline Peraza | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The UTRGV COVID-19 Task Force’s Confirmed Cases Dashboard reported a total of eight positive cases on campus between Oct. 28 and Nov. 5. This decrease comes after 24 student athletes tested positive in October.
Doug Arney, vice president for Administrative Support Services and chair of the UTRGV Infectious Disease Committee, said of the eight reported cases only one is a student athlete.
He believes the number of cases dropped as a result of more frequent testing of student athletes.
“There were outbreaks [and] various reasons for outbreaks,” Arney said. “You have roommates, you have people in the community, so we do routine testing when that happens. They’re being tested every week now, but they’re stabilized. They only had one [case] last week.”
He said the student athletes who previously tested positive were all quarantined on campus.
“We have 50 dorm rooms set aside,” Arney said. “So, we’ll take them to the dorm rooms if they do test positive, [and] we quarantine them.”
He said Scott Spear, medical director of Student & Employee Health and an associate professor of pediatrics, determines the duration of the quarantine.
“He tells them how long they should do these things based on the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines,” Arney said. “So, they essentially stay in those dorms until they are released by Dr. Spear. When they are released they go back to normal.”
Other UTRGV students who test positive and want to quarantine on campus follow the same process.
Case management, also referred to as contact tracing, is conducted by the UTRGV Case Management Team, which holds conversations with individuals infected with the virus and people who have been in close contact with them.
“So, we [have individuals tested] and during that process [case management members] talk to the individual about who they’ve been in close contact with,” Arney said. “And then they say, ‘I’ve been in contact with this person, that person,’ … and our case managers will reach out to those individuals.
“We leave the names out for privacy issues. And then we tell them what they might want to do. They might want to get tested as well. It’s a long process. People call it contact tracing, but on campus we call it case management because we’re case managing individuals on our campus.”
He believes case managing is highly effective.
“I think it’s the most effective method of doing this because, otherwise, if we don’t reach out ever, we could never identify who might have been in close contact, and we can’t help those individuals,” Arney said. “By doing this, we have conversations with individuals who tested positive and [who] say, ‘I’ve been in contact with these people. They probably should be concerned as well.’”
He said the case management team is doing a great job.
“All they’re doing is trying to help the individual and help identify other individuals they’ve been in contact with to safeguard them from others,” Arney said.
