20 students and 4 employees listed as active cases
As of September 8, SWOSU is back in the double digits of COVID-19 active cases with 24 active cases.
Starting Tuesday, the Oklahoma State Health Department (OSDH) will start including rapid antigen COVID-19 tests in its daily reporting.
As a result, state health officials said communities should expect to see higher daily totals.
It is unclear whether those numbers were incuded in Tuesday’s numbers from OSDH.
Four SWOSU employees tested positive, along with 20 SWOSU students. The SWOSU website said, not all cases are at SWOSU or in Weatherford. Once a student or employee is identified as an active case, campus officials follow CDC and university protocol in advising the student or employee to isolate for the recommended number of days.
Once a student or employee is identified as an active case, campus officials follow CDC and university protocol in advising the student or employee to isolate for the recommended number of days. The health department tracks official numbers of cases in Weatherford and the surrounding area www.coronavirus.health.ok.gov.
AS of August 21, 2020, SWOSU said it is their commitment to provide full information to the students, faculty and staff, they present the following information about the current COVID-19 situation at SWOSU.
SWOSU posts the number of known COVID-19 active cases among students and employees each Monday on the university’s website. The numbers are updated weekly after confirmation from health officials, the Office of Human Resources and the Dean of Students.
SWOSU encourages people to view the active COVID-19 numbers in context. As mentioned above, some students who test positive may have never visited campus.
Upon notification of a positive test, the Custer County Department of Health coordinates contact tracing efforts to determine people who may have been in close contact with the person who tested positive. The Department of Health works with SWOSU to identify and contact students or employees who may have been exposed.
Information about cases on campus can be obtained by calling the SWOSU Public Relations & Marketing Office at (580) 774-3063.
SWOSU also wants to remind everyone no matter where one lives; everyone is experiencing and dealing with a pandemic. SWOSU will have active cases on campus and deal with them accordingly. Every higher education institution in the country also is having this experience. This is why SWOSU has safety protocols. There is a mask mandates and SWOSU highly encourages everyone to wash their hands and social distance to slow the spread of COVID-19. SWOSU enforces social distancing in the classrooms by spreading the seats out available in a classroom.
SWOSU said these protocols are in place to lessen the chance of a person with COVID-19 infecting others. This information and other updates on the university’s pandemic response is located on the university’s COVID-19 website.