{"id":51515,"date":"2020-09-17T00:47:18","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T06:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-surprised-by-low-covid-19-cases\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:56:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:56:22","slug":"fort-lewis-college-surprised-by-low-covid-19-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-surprised-by-low-covid-19-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lewis College surprised by low COVID-19 cases"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=18fdb5ee-18ce-4288-9ff9-8083fdc40b3c&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1972\" height=\"967\" alt=\"Fort Lewis College officials say they are surprised no one on campus has tested positive for COVID-19 since move-in week four weeks ago, when 17 people tested positive.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Fort Lewis College officials say they are surprised no one on campus has tested positive for COVID-19 since move-in week four weeks ago, when 17 people tested positive.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Fort Lewis College had given 2,683 COVID-19 tests as of Wednesday, with 17 confirmed cases \u2013 all of which were reported during move-in week, when students were required to be tested.<\/p>\n<p>As of Wednesday, the college was reporting no active cases.<\/p>\n<p>FLC has worked with San Juan Basin Public Health to refine its COVID-19 protocols. FLC typically administers 100 to 150 tests to employees and students on campus per week, and test results average a 48-hour turnaround time, said Lauren Savage, FLC spokeswoman.<\/p>\n<p>FLC Associate Vice President of Student Affairs Jeff Dupont said testing procedures on campus are flowing smoothly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMonday morning, we tested 142 people in four hours, which was amazing. It was more than one test every two minutes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Of the 17 people who tested positive during move-in week, only four showed symptoms, and all students have recovered and are back in the general student population, Dupont said.<\/p>\n<p>Students who test positive are quarantined \u2013 FLC has 30 rooms available for students who need to be quarantined.<\/p>\n<p>Students and employees on campus are asked to fill out a daily symptom tracker via an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fortlewis.edu\/life-at-flc\/gear-up-flc\/campus-health\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app that can be downloaded on FLC\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Dupont said FLC is trying to encourage greater daily use of the symptom-tracker app, and beginning next week it will require all students entering common spaces to show they have completed the daily symptom-tracking app.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe want to ensure students are vigilant around using the app and symptom tracking,\u201d Dupont said.<\/p>\n<p>Through the app, students and employees who don\u2019t have symptoms receive a health pass and clearance to go to campus. If they log symptoms, they get a notification to stay home, and staff members from the Health Center reach out to coordinate COVID-19 testing and proper health care, Savage said.<\/p>\n<p>The school is using QR scans to log everyone\u2019s movements on campus to aid if contact tracing is required.<\/p>\n<p>QR scanning allows contact tracers to reach out to anyone who may have been in proximity of any identified COVID-19-positive individual.<\/p>\n<p>The school also has student coaches, case management teams and faculty teams in regular contact with students to help with COVID-19 issues.<\/p>\n<p>The teams will refer students to the Health Center and help put in place stay-at-home protocols if a student exhibits COVID-19 symptoms.<\/p>\n<p>If students must quarantine, they continue learning through remote options.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur faculty has adapted classrooms incredibly and are not only teaching students but also effectively communicating to them the collective responsibility in virus mitigation it takes to continue with in-person learning,\u201d Savage said.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, FLC ramped up random testing for COVID-19 in an effort to catch any asymptomatic cases on campus, Dupont said. The school started conducting 200 random tests of people on campus, and that will continue.<\/p>\n<p>Dupont said having no one test positive after move-in week was unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe anticipated ongoing cases we would be dealing with,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re very pleased with the way our community has taken this seriously. But to be honest, we\u2019re surprised at the low case numbers after the first couple of weeks of school.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"mwc_shirttail\"><a href=\"mailto:parmijo@durangoherald.com\">parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>17 students test positive during move-in week, no one else detected with virus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51516,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,132,13,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-51515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87966,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51515\/revisions\/87966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51515"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=51515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}