COLLEGES AND universities continue battling major COVID-19 spikes on and off campus – some contending with increased risk of new infections as thousands of students and fans piled into stadiums over the weekend for the official kickoff of the college football season.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison announced that classes will be held online for at least two weeks after a drastic increase in students testing positive for COVID-19. It’s also requiring more than 2,200 students living in two different residence halls to begin a 14-day quarantine.
Last week the university reported a seven-day average positivity rate of 9.2%.
“I think none of us expected quite the magnitude of rise that we saw at the very beginning of this week, which really led us to take action,” Chancellor Rebecca Blank said in an interview with PBS Wisconsin.
“We knew that there would be some spikes,” she said. “Students would come, there would be some partying. The amount of that rise was steeper and faster than we expected.”