Boston College reported an additional four cases of COVID-19 out of 290 undergraduate tests from last week, a 1.38 percent positivity rate, in its Tuesday update of the COVID-19 dashboard.
The additional cases from last week raised the week’s undergraduate positivity rate from .18 percent to .25 percent, with 13 undergraduates testing positive out of 5,281 undergraduate tests. Last week’s undergraduate positivity rate remains the lowest since classes began.
This is the second consecutive week that the positivity rate for the testing numbers BC has added after the weekend have been significantly higher than those of the week on the whole. Last Tuesday, the University added 15 cases of COVID-19 out of 264 undergraduate tests—a 5.68 percent positivity rate—to its dashboard numbers from the week prior.
Senior Associate Director of University Communications Ed Hayward told The Heights last week that end-of-week testing numbers represent a combination of symptomatic and targeted surveillance testing. The University has previously said that it conducts symptomatic testing daily and asymptomatic surveillance testing, the vast majority of which is targeted, throughout the week.
The University reported a total of four positive tests for this week out of 1,072 tests, a rate of .37 percent, on its Tuesday update of the dashboard. These numbers include two positive results out of 656 undergraduate tests, a positivity rate of .3 percent for undergraduates.
The two non-undergraduate positives are the first the University has reported in two weeks, bringing the total number of non-undergraduate positives to five since testing began in August.
BC reported that 20 undergraduates were in isolation as of Tuesday—with 11 in isolation housing and nine isolating at home—and that 158 undergraduates have recovered.
The University reported that it had conducted a total of 46,212 tests, with 185 positives, through Monday. These numbers include 31,269 undergraduate tests, with 180 undergraduate cases.
Featured Image by Jess Rivilis / Heights Editor
