Significant Time Lapse in COVID-19 Caseload Announcements Unique to FSU

Regular and reliable reporting of COVID-19 testing results has become part of the American week. In Allegany County, residents expect announcements on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. At the state-level, dashboards are updated daily. At institutions of higher education, caseload announcements are given anywhere between weekly and daily.

A notable exception to this precedent is Frostburg State University.

Releasing COVID-19 caseload information has become a newly essential and critical aspect of public life at each geographic scale. The dashboard provided by Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Center for Systems Science and Engineering has become the authority on worldwide and country-specific caseload information including total positive cases, total deaths, and case fatality ratios. States each have their own dashboards, including Maryland, which reports data at the county-level. Many counties have their own dashboards as well, though Allegany County where Frostburg State University is located is noticeably lacking. Nearby neighboring counties, like Garrett and Washington, do not disappoint, however.

The importance of this reporting cannot be understated; indeed, these figures are what reopening plans have been based on at the state level and how the federal government deploys ventilators and personal protective equipment, to name a few uses. Thus, the logic flows that reporting by institutions is an expected and appreciated layer of transparency as it helps individuals make decisions about their own health and the health of those they care about.

In a survey of 15 regional institutions including nearby community colleges Allegany College of Maryland and Garrett College, as well as numerous University System of Maryland campuses, FSU is the only campus that does not report COVID-19 caseload information weekly or more often. To see the 15 campuses sampled with links to their reporting dashboards, go here.

This is intentional, says Liz Medcalf, Director of Communications for Frostburg. By email she wrote, “our initial decision to report our tests over a two-week period was based on our concern over potentially identifying individuals when asymptomatic testing just tested student-athletes, and we have endeavored to be consistent.”

However, FSU has been far from consistent. In evaluating the timeline of caseload announcements sent via email to the campus community via FSU News, reports have been released at 7 day, 12 day, and 14 day intervals.

Moreover, while other campuses promise reports by “Monday at Noon,” in the case of Shenandoah University or “Daily by 2:00 p.m.,” in the case of West Virginia University, Frostburg’s website reports that “data will be updated regularly,” and does not give any indication about when to expect an update.  FSU reports have typically come on Tuesdays, they come at variable times ranging from 11:00 a.m. to 2:38 p.m.

Medcalf asserts that Frostburg’s unusual reporting, which averages 10.8 days between announcements, is due to privacy concerns for student-athletes. For context, it’s important to note that surveillance testing at FSU is conducted bi-weekly and consists of 200 randomly administered tests among the entire campus population including staff, faculty, and students. It also includes symptomatic testing conducted by Brady Health. In addition to this testing, the NCAA has mandated that 25-50% of the athletics department be tested every other week. Athletic testing has revealed significant COVID-19 positive results, resulting in the baseball and men’s lacrosse teams being quarantined earlier this semester. In an email on Monday, Oct. 19, FSU reported that numerous other athletic teams, including men’s and women’s basketball, men’s cross country, and certain track and field cohorts would pause athletic-related activity, but the announcement stopped short of revealing any positive cases among those on the rosters.

However, the concern over student-athlete privacy does not appear to be part of the decision-making at other institutions. Indeed, this NCAA mandated testing is a factor for all colleges and universities with athletes practicing on campus. According to the Salisbury Daily Times, student-athletes at Salisbury University have been training and working out for weeks, and yet their campus provides COVID-19 dashboard updates as frequently as daily. It is worth mentioning that Salisbury reports positive cases even when they number in the single digits, for example on Oct. 14 when only one campus community member tested positive.

Finally, while certainly many campuses, including FSU, report only positive and negative cases, overall positivity rate, and number of tests administered, leaders at other universities take data analytics much more seriously. A look at the Salisbury dashboard reveals not just daily or weekly caseload, but rolling analytics aggregated by week, month, and cumulative totals. Other campuses, including West Virginia University, also break down positive cases by respective population, segregating students from faculty and staff. There are also those, like the University of Pittsburgh, which report the number of active students in isolation, or those like the University of Maryland, Baltimore which report what percentage of quarantine housing is occupied. No such information has ever been provided by Frostburg State University.

And, though FSU leaves plenty to be desired in the way of COVID-19 transparency, The New York Times suggests that the real issue at hand is a lack of national tracking system, disparities in campus size, and variable reopening plans which “make campus-to-campus comparisons” somewhat inappropriate. Indeed, some campuses subtract cases once people recover and some only report tests performed on campus.

Nonetheless, the lack of consistent, timely, and transparent reporting at Frostburg has continued to be a thorn in the sides of campus community members. A faculty member from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences who asked to remain anonymous amid the looming threat of layoffs and pay reductions wrote by email, “why does it always feel like we’re pulling teeth to get any information around here?”

Each of Frostburg State University’s news releases regarding COVID-19 caseload can be found here.

August 27

September 8

September 22

September 29

October 6

The October 20 COVID-19 news was released as of 2:38 PM today.