SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va., – Shepherd University has been consistent in the weekly campus wide COVID-19 surveillance tests of 250 random students and employees – with four positive cases emerging from this weeks tests.
The positive results belong to one employee, one commuter student, and two student athletes.
The university then tested an additional 125 student athletes. The results identified 17 additional positive cases, with a few tests still outstanding.
Shepherd University is working closely with the Jefferson County Health Department and collaborating with the department on collecting contact tracing data.
The University Wellness Center will temporarily close beginning Friday, Nov. 6 to prevent the possible spread of COVID-19 to students and the community.
Faculty members will be contacted by student affairs if any students in their respective classrooms are involved in a COVID event.
The seating capacity in Ram’s Den and other dining venues will decrease and social distancing protocols will increase in an effort to halt the spread.
On-campus instruction will continue as planned, in addition to online and hybrid academic delivery modalities.
Several of Shepherd’s new cases are residence hall students. The increased number of isolated and quarantined cases in residence halls is not exceeding Shepherd’s planned capacity to manage COVID-19 efficiently, but the university will carefully evaluate that status on an ongoing basis if the on-campus and community surge worsens.
The Jefferson County Health Department is using the Shepherd campus as one of three locations for ongoing countywide auxiliary-testing due to the volume of cases in Jefferson and Berkeley counties.
Friends and family of Shepherd employees and students are encouraged to obtain free testing on November 8-14 administered in the parking lot of the Wellness Center.
Shepherd has been administering surveillance testing of employees and students each Monday since October 12. All Shepherd employees and students should participate in the weekly testing when alerted. Results are available on Shepherd’s COVID-19 Dashboard https://www.shepherd.edu/covid-19-dashboard/.