Despite vigorous COVID-19 protocols and high vaccination rates in Orange County, COVID-19 cases at UNC continue to rise.
As of Thursday, August 26, the UNC Carolina Together COVID-19 dashboard shows 190 positive student cases through on-campus testing since UNC’s first day of classes on August 18.
The dashboard also reports 64 students currently in isolation housing and 9 students in quarantine housing as of August 26.
“We have seen an increase in positive cases this week,” Campus Health Executive Director Ken Pittman said in a statement to 97.9 The Hill. “While we know we cannot eliminate COVID cases given the level of community spread in North Carolina and the Triangle, we planned and prepared for this and are employing enhanced testing protocols to help to limit the spread.”
While only Avery Residence Hall is listed on Carolina Together as a housing cluster, some students in other residence halls have been advised to complete a COVID-19 test due to other positive cases in the building.
A letter sent to Morrison students this week by Carolina Housing read, “We have identified positive cases in Morrison, so out of an abundance of caution, we are recommending COVID testing for selected residents to keep the campus community as safe as possible and as part of our continued effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 infection on our campus.”
The letter recommended all residents on Morrison floors 3, 5 and 7 to complete a test at the Carolina Together Testing Center as soon as possible, regardless of their vaccination status.
The notification to residents does not mean all students in the residence hall are close contacts or subject to isolation or quarantine.
Currently, the only students required to complete COVID-19 tests through the Carolina Together Testing Program are students who did not attest being vaccinated. Those students are now required to test twice per week. Unvaccinated faculty will begin mandatory COVID-19 testing September 15.
Students who are or become symptomatic are also asked to seek testing at Campus Health.
University leaders continue to recommend all members of the community receive their COVID-19 vaccine. As of August 27, 89 percent of students and 82 percent of faculty and staff have attested to be vaccinated.
Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz shared a message with the UNC campus community Friday evening.
“We know we cannot eliminate COVID-19 cases given the level of community spread in North Carolina and the Triangle,” he said. “We are seeing positive cases on campus, and we planned for this. I am proud that nearly 90% of our students and over 82% of our employees are vaccinated. Our goal is to achieve 100% soon.”
Featured Photo via Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill
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It’s disappointing to see Chapelboro and our university referring to a positive PCR as a “case” of COVID. These tests commonly have a false positive rate of >97%. Critics of the common Corman-Drosten standard of PCR claim the test is wrong 100% of the time.
It’s also disappointing that neither the author nor the university reported the cycles of replication. Higher cycles of replication can guarantee a false positive. High cycle thresholds have already been shown to have given the false impression of high numbers of cases. The inventor of the PCR, Nobel Prize winner, Kary Mullis, was quite public in his criticism of the use of this technology for the diagnosis of disease. He said it could not, and should not, be done. He reasoned that any code sequence could be found if a sample was amplified sufficiently.
Mullis also correctly observed that the mere detection of code sequences that match viral code sequences in no way indicates that the person tested is either sick or contagious. Former Pfizer VP and head of immunology, Micheal Yeadon (and now hundreds of other physicians and researchers) are clear that asymptomatic contagion is not a significant problem.
Hence symptoms are what should be monitored and they should be monitored in BOTH the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. In the most highly vaccinated countries (e.g., UK, Israel, Gibraltar, etc.), symptomatic illness and positive test incidences are actually higher in the vaccinated populations, mainstream media and occasional public official pronouncements to the contrary notwithstanding.
Surely, the university is aware of these data. The current policy of testing only the unvaccinated appears to be calculated to intimidate the unvaccinated into being vaccinated with mRNA vaccines that are only about 1% effective (“absolute effectiveness”). Even stalwart vaccine advocates are alarmed by the VAERS and other surveillance data for the mRNA vaccines. These data indicate that the mRNA COVID vaccines, aggregated, have already caused more injuries and deaths than all other monitored vaccines together over the past 15 years.
The Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and big pharma have been rewarding media outlets, universities, and other “trusted voices” for obeying their policy dictates. As a result, these “trusted voices” have dutifully parroted official narrative that is dramatically at variance with large volumes of data and rational arguments to the contrary.
UNC and Chapelboro should be voices of truth and critical reasoning, especially where inconvenient to corporate and plutocratic interests. They should be leading conscientiously nuanced discussions about dissenting arguments and data that do not support the official narratives of the CDC (a largely corporate-captured advisor-regulator) and the profit-driving billionaire “philanthropies”. UNC and Chapelboro should promote policies that confer no clear benefit to the community or promote discrimination against students who are aware of problems with PCR testing and the current generation of mRNA vaccines.