A coronavirus outbreak has affected the USC fraternity rank, where about 40 people tested positive for COVID-19, USC Student Health director Dr. Sarah Van Orman told the Los Angeles Times.
“A significant number of the cases were associated with four fraternity houses,” said Van Orman. However, the outbreak did not stop there.
In total, around 150 Trojan students and employees have tested positive so far, even as the school has moved the vast majority of online classes, canceled events, limited campus accommodation, additional mask requirements, as well as social distancing and verification of measured symptoms.
“Unless we all understand that our only tools right now are physical distancing and wearing masks, we will continue to have devastation, not only in terms of the economy, our learning, our academics, our jobs, but also people they die, “Van Orman said. “Each of us has to decide what we represent. Frauds need to do that too. “
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California coronavirus update: deaths rise dramatically in the past week as records drop
Los Angeles County overall confirmed 2,628 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday. To date, the county has identified 185,872 positive cases of COVID-19 in all areas of Los Angeles County. The day before, the region recorded 4,825 new coronavirus infections. It is a record number of new cases for a single day.
While early in the Los Angeles coronavirus outbreak cases were much more prevalent among people over the age of 60, the majority of infections in the area have now been reported in people between the ages of 18 and 49.
Meanwhile, the university announced Thursday that in August it will begin increasing to a minimum of 500 tests per day for students and faculty and staff at the site. According to Van Orman, it will establish three observed sample collection sites and eventually transition to an unobserved self-collection model to increase access to rapid, convenient and efficient surveillance tests.
“By increasing our testing capacity, we will be able to more quickly capture and contain sources of infection,” said Van Orman.
He added that partnering with Color, a company that specializes in distributed healthcare and clinical testing, “will expand our understanding of the prevalence and detection of asymptomatic cases at USC so that we can make better-informed healthcare decisions.”
The program is operated through Color’s testing technology and infrastructure, including software to manage risk detection, onsite and distributed test logistics, and sample processing.
The population monitoring testing program, dubbed “Pop Testing,” is slated to begin next month with the current components of the summer campus and expand to larger campus populations during the fall semester.
On Thursday, the region reported 41 new COVID-related deaths during the same 24-hour period, for a total of 4,552 lives lost to the virus.
However, Los Angeles County health officials cautioned that “more than 2,000 of those cases stem from a backlog of laboratory reports.” With that in mind, the director said, “Actually, we are about 1,000 cases higher than a month ago.”
City News Service contributed to this report.
