UPDATED: WKU reports 19 new COVID-19 cases, raising number to 206

Leo Bertucci

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was updated at 5 p.m.

WKU reported 19 new cases of COVID-19 within the campus community in its weekly update released Friday.

WKU now has 206 cases of the novel coronavirus — 175 among students and 31 among faculty, staff and on-campus contractors.

Fourteen of the new cases of COVID-19 were linked to students. The other five cases were faculty, staff and contractors.

WKU is also tracking the number of COVID-19 tests that have been completed by members of the campus community through either Graves Gilbert Clinic at WKU or Med Center Health. All together, 462 COVID-19 tests have been reported since July 1 and 132 tests were added this week.

In the new update, WKU said that it cannot report a positivity rate for all COVID-19 tests because Graves Gilbert Clinic and Med Center Health are the only institutions that share every WKU-related test result with the university. Some positive cases might be made known through self-reporting.

The Herald asked WKU spokesman Bob Skipper how many students are quarantined on campus and Skipper said he didn’t know if any were. He did not respond to a follow-up question as to who would have that information.