I finally got a response from the President's Office at #UGA! My questions were: why they aren't doing the following: 1)Daily reporting of data 2) Public reporting of how many UGA students, staff, & faculty are hospitalized. 3)In-house contact tracing 4)Saliva rapid result tests.
Here's what the President's Office at #UGA told me: 1) Their medical experts recommended the weekly reporting model they are using. 🤔 I pressed and was told that SOME groups get daily numbers, but "the full administration is not being briefed daily on these numbers." #covid19
2) Regarding hospitalizations, apparently #UGA isn't tracking that information currently. 🙄 "We are currently having conversation about how some of these questions may be added to DawgCheck and the impact that it may have"
3) In-house contract tracing: "DPH is the official entity to do this work. We have trained tracers for them and will continue to do all that they need us to do to provide assistance to them." I asked: does this mean #UGA CAN'T do in-house tracing? but he said he already answered.
4) re: saliva tests? "We have a limited supply of these on hand to use in identifying potential clusters. Our current testing method remains the most reliable form of testing." He also said they are expanding testing and recruiting various populations. #UGA#COVID19
5) bonus question! #UGA can we please go online and try to reduce our insane case numbers? "Though we continue to monitor the situation with our medical experts, this is not a decision that has been made at this time." Even though UGA had 1415 new cases reported from 8/31 - 9/6.
I saw some tweets about how there aren't very many COVID hospitalizations of college students, even though there are many positives, including UGA. The thing is: if #UGA isn't tracking that data, how do we know? oh wait WE DON'T KNOW. That seems so important to assessing risk!
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So I finally heard back from @ugahealthcenter about why #UGA’s posted COVID data doesn’t include the TOTAL number of COVID tests UHC gives weekly. Their response? The UGA Health Center isn't providing ANY of the data UGA posts re: their student testing.
Apparently the positive UHC test info that’s posted is from DawgCheck, which is self reported (in this case, by students). Reminder that the Health Center is where symptomatic students can go to be tested. We have asymptomatic surveillance testing available at another location.
From Dr. Russo’s email: “We report to the DPH all data on COVID as is the proper method of reporting notifiable diseases. What is being presented through DawgCheck are positive test reports as submitted by the individual, not the UHC.”