Cal Poly students made up about 45% of COVID-19 cases in San Luis Obispo County over the last week, based on data collected by the Cal Poly campus dashboard and San Luis Obispo (SLO) County.
As of April 5, five on-campus students and 50 off-campus students had tested positive for the virus over the last seven days, with a high of 20 cases on March 29. A total of 123 positive cases have been counted for the county in the same time.
County Public Health Spokesperson Michelle Shoresman wrote in an email to Mustang News that out of more than 20,000 cases from the county, they attribute 373 to on-campus residents since the start of the pandemic.
Because Cal Poly is continuing to require testing of all students who are living or learning on campus, University Spokesperson Matt Lazier said it’s reasonable we’d continue finding cases of COVID-19 from the student body.
According to Lazier, Cal Poly has been running more daily tests than the county, including more than double the number of tests on March 29.
“Meanwhile, the county’s overall testing rate has been declining steadily since January,” Lazier said in an email to Mustang News.
As the total number of COVID-19 cases within the county has fallen, cases from the student population can appear as larger percentages in comparison to overall numbers, Lazier said. Still, the county maintains a larger positivity rate than Cal Poly as of April 4.