Twenty-three members of a sorority house at Oklahoma State University have tested positive for COVID-19, the university said this weekend. OSU spokeswoman Monica Roberts told The Oklahoman that since Saturday, only one Pi Beta Phi member has had symptoms.
A third-party contractor will disinfect the building and will do so again after the two-week quarantine period.
“This was expected,” Roberts said. “If you bring back 20,000 students, there will always be more cases related to campus. We have been preparing for it for five months and have protocols in place to manage the situation.”
This doubles the number of OSU students that were confirmed to have COVID-19. The university conducted mandatory COVID-19 tests on all students before moving into their residences and found that 22 had the virus.
Fall semester classes are scheduled to begin Monday at the university.
The coronavirus has affected national universities – and Greek life. Four clusters of positive COVID-19 cases have hit the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The outbreaks occurred in two bedrooms on campus, private student housing and a fraternity home.
Last month, 45 cases of coronavirus were reported University of Southern California were linked to three fraternities affiliated with the school and more than 100 students living in fraternal homes near the University of Washington campus reported positive tests for COVID-19.
News of the COVID-19 outbreak at the sorority house came as Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Task Force Coordinator, led a roundtable discussion at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences in Tulsa. The meeting was closed to journalists, but state and local officials who attended told the Tulsa World that Birx was unwavering about the need for masks and distance in public.
“She said she came to Oklahoma because she’s from other states, and asks people to change their behavior to protect others,” said Joy Hofmeister, state superintendent of public schools.
Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt has opposed the imposition of a statewide mask order. A statement from Stitt’s office said Birx complimented Oklahoma’s pressure to test saliva for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“There are a lot of levers we can pull, but at this point we are in really good shape,” Stitt said in the statement. “We have to be very careful because kids are going to school.”
The state Department of Emergency Management has begun sending personal protective equipment to schools statewide as classes begin, some in person and some by distance learning.
Items including masks, gloves, jackets and face shields were sent Friday to distribution points in Oklahoma and Tulsa counties for schools in those regions, the department said, and deliveries to other regional sites will begin Monday.
Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum put a local mask order in place, but has been vocal about his frustration with neighbors nearby who have not.
“(Birx) said they have not seen any state or city put in a mask mandate and that it does not make an impact,” Bynum told the World. “The patients in Tulsa hospitals are not all from Tulsa.”
Birx refused to speak to the media before leaving Tulsa, with a tight travel plan. She’s on a Midwestern tour that has included stops in Nebraska and Kansas. She is scheduled to be in Arkansas Monday.
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation said Birx also met with tribal health officials.
The reported number of coronavirus cases in Oklahoma increased on Sunday to 544 with four more deaths due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health. On Saturday, the department reported an additional 901 cases of the coronavirus and 13 more deaths.
.
