Virginia Tech’s president says the school is not contemplating any change in operations based on current COVID-19 trends.
The university reported 157 new cases in the last last full-week update to its COVID-19 dashboard. During a virtual town hall Thursday morning, President Timothy Sands said he expects that number to increase to a few hundred cases in the upcoming weeks. "We’re still in the range of where we thought we would be," Sands said. "The key is will we see that plateauing over the next couple of weeks and then trending down."
Sands and the director of the New River Health District say they expect that to happen, based on the experience of nearby Radford University where cases have started to drop off after an initial jump.
Doctor Noelle Bissell said the increase in student cases has not been a threat to the broader community so far. "Our students are tied to students. Our community members are tied to community members. We are not seeing any cases in the community that we cannot trace which would be a red flag," Bissell explained. She added that most infected students at Radford and Virginia Tech are experiencing mild symptoms or none at all.
Sands said transmission of the virus from the univeristy to the broader community is one of the factors the school is monitoring. Others include case numbers, positivity rate, available quarantine space on campus and available hospital capacity in the New River and Roanoke Valleys.
Bissell, Sands and the mayor of Blacksburg all encouraged students to act responsibly over the upcoming holiday weekend to help keep the school year on-track.
***Editor's Note: Radio IQ is a service of Virginia Tech.
