Northwestern University this afternoon reported its worst week yet for COVID-19, identifying 39 cases in the past seven days affecting 20 students, five staff and six faculty members.
That’s up from 13 cases reported the previous week.
The school school says that over the seven day period ending Wednesday it conducted 4,948 tests for the disease, down from 5,109 in the previous period and found 28 new positive cases for a positive rate of 0.57%, more than double the 0.23% rate for the previous period.
NU says it has conducted a total of 35,680 tests since Aug 15.
The COVID cases reported by the university are included in the City of Evanston’s case counts if, and only if, the person involved lives in Evanston.
To look at the data another way, NU with about 30,800 students, faculty and staff, had 39 cases during the past week, or a rate of 12.66 case per 10,000 population, compared to a rate of 4.22 the previous week.
Evanston during the same period had 81 cases among its 75,000 residents, or a rate of 10.8 cases per 10,000 population, compared to a rate of 8.0 the previous week.
Late last Friday NU announced that it was switching from hybrid to all remote classes for its full-time MBA students in the Kellogg School of Management for two weeks after at least four students in the grad program tested positive for COVID-19.