The University of Georgia saw a sharp decline in new cases of Coronavirus from September 7th to September 11th, with only 421 new cases reported. The majority of cases are still coming from students, with 404 of the ones from last week being students. Despite this, UGA says that its residence halls are following all COVID-19 protocol and highlighted the measures being taken that staff were trained on in an article on UGA Today.
Asymptomatic surveillance testing saw no significant change in the amount of tests performed, despite increased testing capacity. The university is still testing an average of under 400 asymptomatic individuals a day, although the positivity rate did go down a bit from last week, landing at 7.61% with 126 cases.
Dr. Garth Russo, executive director of the University Health Center and chair of UGA’s Medical Oversight Task Force, warns that “we are by no means out of the woods yet,” despite this improvement in numbers. According to Russo, the data is cause for “cautious optimism,” but there is still a chance of seeing an increase in numbers due to Labor Day weekend activity.