As the new college semester gets underway at campuses across New Hampshire, state health officials are reporting 25 active cases of COVID-19 at five schools across the state.
(Note: these case numbers were as of Friday, September 4th).
Those cases are at the University of New Hampshire, Keene State, Franklin Pierce University, New England College, and Rivier University.
As announced on Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services will track cases of COVID-19 at schools and universities using a new dashboard.
According to Jake Leon, a spokesperson for DHHS, the cases listed will only include students who spend any time on-campus, including commuters. But if a student who is studying fully remotely tests positive, and does not go to a school or college campus for any reason, they would not be included in the dashboard.
That’s because colleges want to track what’s happening on their physical campuses.
The cases on that dashboard will also be listed on the state health department's map of cases at the town level, according to Leon.
Ahead of the Labor Day weekend, administrators at UNH sent an email to students, encouraging them to “celebrate responsibly, stay on campus or in the local area" and avoid large gatherings at bars and house parties.
UNH is posting a weekly summary of its testing and case data going back to July 29. Forty four people on the Durham campus have tested positive since then. That data includes pre-arrival tests, which students had to take before getting to campus.
Plymouth State University is also publishing a daily update. That includes the number of positive cases and the number of people in quarantine or isolation.
