At this point, 12% of COVID-19 tests at USC Student Health returned positive, Chief Health Officer Sarah Van Orman said in a Tuesday press meeting via Zoom.
Van Orman announced on March 16 that USC’s testing availability for COVID-19 would be expanded to “people who have symptoms," not limited by their travel history or risk exposure. On March 25, she wrote in a university-wide email that “in Los Angeles, availability and criteria for COVID-19 testing may change as we receive guidance from public health officials in this rapidly evolving health care environment.”
Although Los Angeles City announced last week that COVID-19 tests would be “strictly limited to residents of Los Angeles who are in the most high-risk categories and most vulnerable,” Van Orman said USC Student Health has not changed its testing guidelines and availability.
“We’re still able to provide testing to most students who have symptoms that are consistent with COVID-19,” she said. “We’re seeing right now that about 12% of the people we’re testing are testing positive, which is a pretty high percentage.”
In an email to the USC community Tuesday, Van Orman wrote that USC Student Health has diagnosed and learned numerous new cases of COVID-19 infections among USC community members both in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the past several days. In the vast majority of cases, these individuals were not at the USC campuses while they were symptomatic, she wrote.
“We now have dozens of students who tested positive here at Student Health, as well as probably equal dozens of students who called us from across the country and told us they’ve tested positive,” she said in the press briefing.
Previously, USC students confirmed with COVID-19 were related to international travel. Many new cases now are associated with community spread and domestic travel, according to Van Orman. She acknowledged the university’s efforts of de-densify campus that “have greatly decreased the potential for clusters of infection” and emphasized the importance of social distancing again.
“People should assume that everywhere they go, every surface they touch, every person that is in contact with may potentially be infectious,” she said.
Annenberg Media spoke to students who tested for COVID-19 at USC and elsewhere and learned that they waited five to seven days for the result to be available. Van Orman said initially, the test result took a really long time, about five to seven days or even longer, due to the capacity in the testing facilities, but right now their turnaround is about 24 to 48 hours.
“We’re hopeful that in the next week, it’ll get even faster,” she said.
She also added that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved a rapid coronavirus test, which could make testing results available within 10 to 15 minutes.
“That would be what we hoped would call a point-of-care test,” she said. “Something like that we think is really critical in terms of rapid identification and isolation.”
Since March 20, USC has been taking an individualized approach to notify people and places that may have exposure risks. In the Tuesday email, Van Orman stated that “although we will continue contact notification at this time, we also recognize that a sudden rapid surge in positive tests in Los Angeles may render that protocol obsolete.”
She explained via Zoom that as community transmission is spreading, public health officials can no longer assume that they will be able to identify and trace everybody with exposure risks due to the number of positive tests. Thus, remaining social distance and practicing personal hygiene are very important to prevent infection.
“I don’t mean to frighten people, but there’s nowhere you go that isn’t at risk,” she said. “You just should be assuming that you’re going to pick this up around you in the world. We all have to be doing things to help prevent that.”
Van Orman said students have been “incredibly understanding” and “very compliant,” in terms of self-isolation.
“When we talk to students about you need to self-isolate and stay home, they take it seriously,” she said. “I think our students have been really responsive to the information, recognizing that they may not be the population that are most vulnerable, but they’re in contact with individuals who are.”
One USC DPS employee tested positive for COVID-19 on March 29. USC has reinforced a series of health measurements within the DPS, including temporal thermometer checks at the beginning of each shift and the use of surgical face masks for all employees while in contact with others.
Van Orman said that right now, healthcare and DPS employees are routinely using masks, and it’s also for any employee that part of their job needs to come within six feet of other people.
“If by the nature of your work, you can’t maintain social distancing or other sorts of mechanism, then we provide a mask,” she said.
After March 13, most room reservations in the USC Hotel were canceled by its guest, according to Dirk DeJong, executive director of USC Hospitality and USC Hotel.
“In order to make the entire hotel available for the university for emergency operations, we called the remaining guests with reservations and check-in dates up to 4/14/20 to cancel their reservations,” DeJong wrote. “We are not accepting regular reservations through the end of April, subject to extension by the university. All rooms are on standby to be used for university purposes with several dedicated floors for students being quarantined, with security presence on these floors 24/7.”
According to Van Orman, the USC Hotel has been housing people that were returning from studying abroad programs and needed a place to stay or self-isolate. It also houses people who test positive, wait for their testing results or have exposure risks for self-isolation.
DeJong stated that the hotel is also providing housing for Keck Medicine staff and other essential USC staff members. Van Orman said as more students are gone, it will be the hotel’s primary role to provide a place for Keck Medicine healthcare workers who may not be able to return to their families.
“We do not have any remaining regular guests staying at the hotel, with the exception of one faculty member who preferred to stay with us until the end of her reservation until 4/14,” DeJong wrote.
Deona Wiles, safety director of USC Environmental Health and Safety, said in the press briefing via Zoom that her department has been working with essential USC staff members who continue to be on campus for keeping the university operation. Her department determines risk evaluations and strategizes ways of enhancing social distancing based on their work process and job descriptions.
For the USC Hotel, Wiles said procedures such as no-contact check-in and food-delivery have been set up along with more frequent cleaning work.
As of March 31, there are 3011 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 54 deaths in Los Angeles County, including Long Beach and Pasadena, according to the LA Department of Public Health. As of March 31, the University Park community, which contains the university’s UPC campus and its northern neighborhood, has 12 confirmed cases.
Headline update 1:11 a.m. April 1: We updated the headline from “Chief Health Officer: 12% of testing results for COVID-19 at USC were positive” to “12% of testing results for COVID-19 are positive at USC Student Health.” We added “Student Health” because we want to be more specific in our headline to avoid potential misunderstanding. We also changed “were” to “are” as we generally use the present tense in our headline.