Thirteen Santa Fe College students reported testing positive for COVID-19 between March 30 and Monday.
The college’s total number of reported positive cases since last March has now reached 732, according to reports provided by Santa Fe spokesperson Jay Anderson. There are 12,469 students enrolled this semester, Anderson wrote in an email.
Santa Fe will host a vaccination event with the Alachua County Health Department Thursday starting at 9 a.m. It will be held at the Jackson N. Sasser Fine Arts Hall on the college’s northwest campus. A total of 1,500 faculty, staff, students and members of the public can receive the Moderna vaccine, Anderson wrote in an email.
Based on a timeline determined by Santa Fe’s contact tracing team, one student may have been positive while on campus over the past two weeks. However, the team determined this did not result in any additional exposures.
Santa Fe does not require routine testing, meaning its case numbers are all self-reported by students and faculty. If someone feels sick or exhibits COVID-19 symptoms, they’re treated as a presumptive positive case and made to isolate — regardless of whether they are tested.
Using the numbers provided in the two reports, 25% of students and employees who reported feeling sick over the last two weeks tested positive for COVID-19. This percentage was calculated using the total number of opened cases, which includes people who reported feeling sick to the college regardless of whether they were tested and the total number of reported positive cases.
Since March 2020, 30.74% of those who reported feeling sick to the college tested positive for COVID-19.
Contact Juliana Ferrie at jferrie@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @juliana_f616.
Juliana Ferrie is a second-year UF journalism student. She is excited to be working for The Alligator as the Santa Fe Beat reporter. In her free time, you can find her reading or listening to music.
