State University of New York Chancellor Jim Malatras today visited and toured SUNY Plattsburgh, and Clinton and North Country Community Colleges as they begin weekly testing of all students, faculty, and staff on campus and prepare for Spring reopening. Chancellor Malatras reviewed pre-semester testing and unveiled SUNY’s updated COVID-19 Tracker, which was announced yesterday and will give North Country campuses and others additional trend and comparative data, with the same real-time results. The upgrades allow greater transparency on SUNY’s 64 colleges and universities, so campuses have the most information to isolate and respond to emerging cases on campuses.
SUNY Plattsburgh is conducting its pre-semester testing this week in alignment with SUNY’s mandate that all students, faculty, and staff returning for the spring semester be tested or return to campus with a negative test. Both SUNY Plattsburgh and North Country Community College will start in-person classes on February 15, while classes have already started at Clinton Community College. Today marked Chancellor Malatras’ first visits to the community colleges since his tenure began last fall.
“As SUNY Plattsburgh and the last remaining campuses reopen, we are encouraged by low levels of the virus detected on our campuses going into the semester—particularly as positive cases have been higher across the nation,” said Chancellor Malatras. “Weekly testing and our ability to monitor multiple levels of data will keep campus leadership informed to make swift decisions as cases happen, but our greatest weapon in fighting back this virus is everyone on campus doing what is necessary to stay safe—and with each visit to SUNY campuses I have the honor of meeting students who are ready for in-person classes, and for what they have to do to keep cases low within their community.”
SUNY Plattsburgh President Alexander Enyedi said, “We are excited to safely welcome our students back for the spring semester. The opportunity to return is important to each of them and to us. We are thankful for tools like pooled surveillance testing that can better ensure the health and safety of our students, their families, our full campus community and the wider Plattsburgh area. We are doing this right and with care.”
Clinton Community College President Ray DiPasquale said, “We are pleased to welcome Chancellor Malatras to Clinton Community College for his first visit. We also want to applaud him for his pro-active policies in regard to COVID and for keeping us all safe. We are excited to share the Institute for Advanced Manufacturing, some of the recent renovations to campus as well as information on workforce training with him that we are undertaking during this pandemic. It is also an opportunity for the Chancellor to thank the faculty and staff for their COVID efforts, but most importantly, for helping our students be successful.”
North Country Community College President Joe Keegan said, “With the Spring 2021 semester underway, we welcome the Chancellor to North Country and extend our thanks to him, the SUNY system, and our local public health partners for their help in navigating these challenging circumstances safely. In-person classes begin the week of February 15th, and we have been able to expand the number of students participating in face-to-face learning in large part due to their help. From daily COVID-19 screenings to SUNY Upstate’s pooled surveillance testing methodology, we are able to offer our campus community an additional form of assurance that we are doing all we can to help our students, our employees, and the communities where we learn, work and live, stay healthy and safe.”
The enhanced COVID-19 Tracker dashboard includes:
- Testing data broken down by faculty/staff and students; including total tests, positives, and positivity rates
- Quarantine/Isolation space capacity calculator system-wide and by campus
- State-Region-County-Campus positivity rate comparisons, mapped with filtering capabilities
- Monthly aggregate testing trends
- Historic trends mapped system-wide and by campus
Those visiting the dashboard will continue to review vital information on daily and weekly test and positivity data. Chancellor Malatras announced last month that all SUNY campuses will increase the frequency of SUNY’s mandatory COVID testing to weekly testing of all students, faculty, and staff who regularly report to campus. Since the 2020-2021 academic year began in August, SUNY has conducted 857,103 tests with a 0.54 positive percentage rate.
The seven-day positivity rate across SUNY is 0.44 percent, versus 4.42 percent in New York State. As the semester progresses, SUNY will continue to revisit and recalibrate policies and procedures to ensure the safest possible communities for our students to learn and thrive.
The COVID-19 Case Tracker dashboard launched in September provides a case count for all SUNY campuses and for individual campuses. The data is reported by campuses every 24 hours and added to the dashboard in real time. The dashboard also includes vital information on the different types of tests administered, daily and weekly test data, overall positivity rates, available quarantine and isolation space, and hospitalizations. Since its launch in September, the dashboard has been viewed more than 633,000 times with over 551,000 unique viewers.
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