The White House Coronavirus Task Force released its most recent report on Oklahoma this week. StateImpact’s Catherine Sweeney reports that the document offers new advice to officials in university towns.
For several weeks, White House officials have compiled coronavirus data and issued reports for states, sending them to the governor. Under pressure, Gov. Kevin Stitt recently starting making those reports public. This week’s report says Oklahoma has the 13th-highest new case count in the country, and it has the 9th-highest positivity rate.
It says that community transmission continues to be high in rural and urban counties across Oklahoma, and it notes increasing transmission in the major university towns.
The White House document offers several recommendations to tackle transmission in college towns, including testing all students who return to campus and maintaining routine surveillance testing throughout the semester. It advises colleges to create care and quarantine centers to prevent students from returning to multi-generational homes. It also advises requiring universities with the necessary technology to assist K-12 schools with their testing efforts.
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