COUNTY DOH REPORTS:
107 MORE CASES
TODAY, AND ALL
ARE AT SUNY-O
In All, 460 Test Positive Since March
COOPERSTOWN – In all, 107 new coronavirus cases were reported in Otsego County today, and all were SUNY Oneonta students, according to county Public Health Director Heidi Bond.
That brings the total to 460 total confirmed cases since the pandemic threat arrived in March, Bond reported, four times as many as had been reported in the county when the SUNY Oneonta outbreak began Aug. 24, a week ago Monday.
Shortly before 9 this evening, SUNY Oneonta released a statement saying it has screened more than 2,500 students since Friday, when testing began in earnest, and as of this morning had identified 289 cases in the campus community.
“The college expects to receive the results of several hundred tests later tongiht, and will report these tomorrow,” the college’s statement said.
In her announcement, Bond said her office has identified 334 students testing positive for COVID-19, 45 more than the college included in its released.
“There may be a reporting discrepancy” – and clearly is – “between (county) numbers and SUNY Oneonta numbers,” Bond said. “This is due to timing
and confirmation of reports received by each entity.”
Hartwick College’s positives remained at 2, and there are no hospitalizations, according to the county.
Send them all home until COVID is over
As much as I’d like to do this, it will only lead to spreading the flare-up broadly and making it difficult to screen all the students and risk further transmission while they are in transit and once they get home. No less an authority than Dr. Anthony Fauci pointed out that the way to handle this type of outbreak is to quarantine all these students in their rooms. At least if they are all in their rooms the authorities can keep track of them and easily see if someone is violating quarantine.
They essentially need to be locked down; special COVID dorms,testing once symptoms subside before letting them out, boxed meals delivered to their rooms, scheduled trips to the bathroom so there is never more than one person there at a time.– Richard Sternberg, M.D.