Coronavirus continues to spread among Arizona State University students. As of Aug. 30, 775 students had tested positive for COVID-19, ASU said in a Monday night statement. On Friday, the number of infected students was 452. The number of infected ASU faculty and staff members stayed at 28.
The infected students represented 1% of ASU’s student body.
About 400 of these infected students live off campus. There are 328 infected students who live in Tempe dorms, and the rest live at the ASU downtown Phoenix or West campuses. There are currently no known positive cases at the Polytechnic campus.
ASU is tightening its policies for the residence halls such as further restricting visitors and de-densifying higher risk living configurations with communal bathrooms and communal living situations.
Repeated policy violation will result in housing removals, ASU said.
ASU will continue to offer hybrid classes at a reduced capacity. The university has issued a statement:
We are constantly reviewing the results of our ambitious COVID-19 testing program and using the numbers to inform us and evaluate what we do, and help us adjust. Our epidemiologists are investigating the virus transmission both on and off campus. This is something new and we’re all trying to navigate and fight through the ongoing global pandemic.
There’s not one event or one location or one activity that is contributing to the spread. It’s a visit here, a small hangout there and the tendency to congregate, though we’re not seeing ongoing egregious violations. Sometimes it’s just a couple of kids hanging out in a dorm room who take their masks off – it’s a very contagious disease, and it’s spreading.
Our numbers are increasing so we need to take additional steps to further fight the spread. We have 5,000 spaces available right now in our residence halls. With the shift that we announced last night, we’ll be dispersing students out across all of our residence halls, moving some students to different rooms and different residence halls to reduce the density in the dorms.
We want to make this transition as smooth as possible for the students. If issues arise during this transition, they can let us know at [email protected].
