Franklin College officials Friday afternoon told staff and students all classes and activities will move online next week after more than a dozen student athletes tested positive for COVID-19.
In a letter to faculty, staff and students Friday, President Kerry Prather said all in-person athletic activities are suspended for the week, effective Friday afternoon. Classes and co-curricular activities next week will be online only, but students are welcome to remain on campus.
This comes after 15 of 73 student-athletes tested this week were positive for COVID-19. Prather called the spike "an isolated but concerning increase," and said the college was working to verify the accuracy of the testing and obtain test results from a wider sample of students.
The positive cases were not clustered within a single team, said Andrew Jones, vice president for student development and dean of students, in a letter to the campus community Friday morning. Most infected students are asymptomatic, but isolation and quarantine protocols were followed, he said in the letter.
Contact tracing by the Johnson County Health Department is also underway, according to the letter.
As part of the college’s plan and consistent with NCAA guidelines, weekly surveillance testing of student-athletes began once practices began last week, Jones said. Last week, one of 46 students tested were positive for COVID-19, and isolation, quarantine and contact tracing protocols were followed, according to the letter.
"This higher rate of positivity is concerning and unusual, especially compared with the sample of a week prior. At the direction of our health care advisers, we are asking each of the students who tested positive to be retested while isolating at home so we have data confirming the validity of the original tests. That data will be informational only and will not alter our isolation protocol. That request is being made only because the rate of positivity is dramatically at odds with the previous week’s sample, with the local rates of infection and with typical samples of largely asymptomatic persons in this age group," Jones said in the letter.
Overall, about 13% of student-athletes tested yielded positive results. Last week, the positivity rate was just 2%. This week, it jumped to more than 20%.
"We are communicating today with our partner physicians for their recommendations on other appropriate next steps and will keep the campus community informed moving forward as needed," Jones said.
The Class of 2020’s postponed graduation scheduled for next weekend will go on as planned. But any current students with a role in the ceremony must provide the college with a negative COVID-19 test result to participate, Prather said.
"We must not become complacent or too comfortable with any periodic reprieve from this illness. We must remember that our goal is to limit the possibility of exposure and appropriately manage the positive cases that will inevitably arise," Jones said in the letter.
