USF St. Petersburg’s Wellness Center has administered 328 COVID-19 vaccines since April.
Courtesy of USF
By Annalise Anderson
Florida’s positive COVID-19 cases reached record-breaking highs during the last month, but USF administrators are hopeful that the state has, once again, rounded the corner and cases will continue to trend downward.
According to the university’s COVID-19 dashboard, USF St. Petersburg has recorded 14 student cases and eight faculty/staff cases since classes started on Aug. 23; Tampa recorded 202 student cases and 64 faculty/staff cases; Sarasota-Manatee recorded four student cases and one faculty/staff case.
That same week, Florida Department of Health reported a record-breaking peak of 151,855 new cases. Last week, that number dropped to 100,012 new cases.
“The numbers of new cases are starting to trend downward in the state of Florida – the state is no longer reporting data by county – and we are hopeful that if the trend continues, within the next two months, we should be back to the kinds of numbers we were seeing in June,” said Donna Petersen, dean of USF College of Public Health.
According to Joe Puccio, director of USF Student Health Services, 328 vaccines have been administered at USF St. Petersburg since April. Since June, 429 St. Petersburg students have been tested.
The university still has no way of knowing how many students are fully vaccinated.
Administrators have also said they have no way to verify how many students, faculty or staff have been hospitalized or died due to COVID-19.
Petersen told The Crow’s Nest that the university confirmed deaths of two staff members on the Tampa campus, but that “we have no way of knowing for sure” if there are more unaccounted deaths.
Students are expected to self-report symptoms and positive tests by emailing USF clinical staff, who will initiate proper testing, contact tracing and quarantine measures. Students are discouraged from visiting campus until they are cleared by the university.
During a St. Petersburg campus town hall meeting on Sept. 2, Petersen said tracking positive student cases is reliant on effective communication from sick students via email and phone calls. “You know how students are. They don’t always answer the phone, they don’t always respond to an email,” Petersen said.
A lack in communication from students leaves USF Health “no ability to quickly discern the level of risk” on campuses, according to Petersen.
“We’re trying to keep our COVID-19 dashboard current because we believe in transparency, but it’s just been incoming from all sides,” Petersen said.
“Please dear God [it appears] we’re over the peak in this region and that we’re on the downside of this surge, which means the case numbers are declining. The test positivity rate is going down, the reproductive rate is going down,” Petersen said in the meeting.
“It seems to follow a sort of two-month time continuum, so that’s kind of where we are now. We’re in the end of the second month, and we are hopeful.”
In an email to the USF community on Aug. 31, St. Petersburg Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock asked everyone to “recommit to what we expect of all our students, faculty and staff on this campus” and to “follow the guidance of our USF health leaders.”
“Remember that we have staff, faculty and students with children at home too young to be vaccinated, with immunocompromised conditions which place them at higher risk than the general population, and with friends and family members who are still not vaccinated,” Tadlock wrote.
Florida Department of Health’s Sept. 10 COVID-19 report shows only 50% of Florida residents ages 20-29 are fully vaccinated.
The 16-29 age group has accounted for the majority of the state’s COVID-19 cases. In that age group, 307 virus-related deaths have been recorded.
