GV COVID-19 campus data update

The Grand Valley State University community has had a cumulative total of 7,303 cases since Aug. 1, 2020. The university’s update for this brief was from Thursday, March 17.

Through testing results this past week, GVSU’s Virus Action team have so far reported 25 current active cases including one faculty member, four staff members, two on-campus students, 12 “off-campus Ottawa” students, four “off-campus Kent” students and two “off-campus other” students with active COVID-19 cases.

“Current active cases” is the count of positive cases reported to the Virus Action Team over the past 10 days.  This is an estimate of those currently in isolation, assuming a 10-day symptomatic period following the reporting of a positive test result. Actual periods of isolation are specific to the individual and determined by the county health department.

Vaccination: GVSU encourages all students, faculty and staff to receive the COVID-19 vaccination as soon as possible. All students, faculty and staff are required to be fully vaccinated, barring a medical or religious exemption or postponement. According to the COVID-19 data dashboard, an 80% vaccination rate in the GVSU community is required to reach herd immunity and minimal virus transmission.

Currently, approximately 87% of students report being fully vaccinated, while approximately 93% of faculty and staff reports being fully vaccinated.

There are currently 2,214 students and 139 faculty/staff with approved vaccination exemptions.

Testing and Incidence: GVSU’s own testing program has performed 129,038 tests overall since Aug. 1, 2020, for a cumulative positivity rate of 0.76% from the latest update as of last week. A total of 661 tests were performed over the last seven days.

“GV Surveillance” includes the GV/Spectrum administered programs of randomized testing, regular testing of high-risk groups and invited testing of individuals connected to potential clusters. A calendar is available. “GV Total” includes surveillance testing plus all symptomatic/exposure tests administered by Spectrum.

Michigan Science Olympiad regional competition returns to GV in person

The Region 12 Michigan Science Olympiad event returned to Grand Valley State University in a fully in-person format for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. 

Hosted by GVSU’s Regional Math and Science Center, nearly 700 middle and high school students from Kent, Ottawa and Muskegon counties joined to display their work.

On March 19, the competition’s 46 scheduled events were held in numerous places across the Allendale campus with the headquarters located in the Fieldhouse Arena. The events began at 8:30 a.m. and concluded with an awards ceremony at 4 p.m.

Out of the 46 teams that competed, six middle school and six high school teams qualified for the state tournament.