UNC announced three on-campus residence halls are experiencing clusters of positive COVID-19 cases on Tuesday.

The university shared a release saying students on specific floors of Ehringhaus Residence Hall, Hinton James Residence Hall and Parker Residence Hall were proactively tested for the coronavirus last week. As a result, clusters of five or six cases each were identified.

UNC said the third floor of Ehringhaus, the third floor of Parker, and the seventh and eighth floors of Hinton James are the sites of the clusters.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services defines a COVID-19 cluster as “a minimum of five cases with illness onsets or initial positive results within a 14-day period” that have “plausible epidemiologic linkage between cases.” The cases would originate from the same location, group or event around the same time, with UNC defining a “location” in these scenarios as a single on-campus dorm or dwelling.

Two other COVID-19 clusters have been reported during UNC’s fall semester so far. On August 11, the university reported a cluster from an outdoor event at the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, while the year’s first dorm-based cluster was identified at Avery Residence Hall on August 21.

According to UNC, those who are identified in the COVID-19 clusters are isolating and receiving medical monitoring. Close contacts to these people are being contacted by Campus Health and the Orange County Health Department for contract tracing procedures. UNC said because these clusters were identified through proactive testing of all students on these affected floors, those who were already tested and are not experiencing symptoms are not required to be tested again through the Carolina Together Testing Center.

As of Monday, August 30, the Carolina Together Dashboard said UNC’s campus community has reported nearly 450 positive coronavirus cases since the start of the month. 91 students were living in isolation dorms due to COVID-19 test results, while 11 were living in the quarantine dorm.

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