Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has high praise for colleges and universities that have brought down their COVID-19 positivity rate, but he wants to see residential schools use testing to get a better picture of the rate of infection on their campus. New guidance will be released in the next few days that will require weekly random tests of the schools' population.
"We want to make sure that they're testing students that do not have symptoms, a random sample. Leaving it up to them as to what population to test, but we recommend a minimum - minimum - of 3%. Screening students that do not have symptom really gives college presidents and their teams a real look at what's happening on their campus."
DeWine says testing has helped schools identify and isolate positive COVID-19 positive students. At at the end of August Miami University had a positivity rate of 5.5% and an average of 100 new cases a day. This week the positivity rate is down to 1%, and there are less than 20 cases per day. Ohio State University reported 6% positivity rate at the beginning of September, but is now down to around 2 percent - below the statewide average of 3.3%.
