Fifteen Santa Fe College employees and students reported testing positive for COVID-19 between April 13 and Monday.
Of this number, 13 cases were students and two were employees.
The college’s total number of reported positive cases since last March is now 747, according to a report provided by Santa Fe spokesperson Jay Anderson. There are 12,469 students enrolled at the college this semester.
Santa Fe hosted a vaccination clinic in collaboration with the Alachua County Health Department and UF Thursday on its Northwest Campus. The event originally had 1,500 appointments available for members of the public age 18 or older to receive the Moderna vaccine. The clinic received about 400 advanced registrations but also allowed walk-ups, Anderson wrote in an email. As of Friday, Anderson was not sure what the exact number of people who received vaccines was.
Based on a timeline determined by Santa Fe’s contact tracing team, three students and two employees may have been positive while on campus. The team determined this may have resulted in one additional exposure.
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 report, 60% of students and employees who reported feeling sick over the last week 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, 31% 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.
