Message from UND President Andrew Armacost on the Increase in COVID-19 Cases

GRAND FORKS, ND (trfnews.i234.me) A message from University of North Dakota President, Andrew Armacost regarding the rising number of COVID-19 cases.
hi this is andy armacust unds president thanks for tuning in for this bi-weekly message and as you know i typically talk about one or two things that are on my mind uh today what is primarily on my mind is the kovid pandemic and i wanted to make sure that you were tracking all the things that are happening across the state and also here in grand forks and on campus and what we’ve seen across the state and locally is not a good picture the levels of positivity of our testing is higher than it’s been in a long time and the trend is upward in terms of our cases and if you look back to what happened in the summer we had great systems in place that we still have in place currently um and uh the the number of cases peaked at 330 and uh and then we’re able through testing through quarantining and isolation and through good health practices we were quickly able to drive that number down and what we’re currently seeing is a number of cases in roughly the 100 to 120 range and so this number has been creeping up steadily over the last 10 days to two weeks and just know that the resources we have available on campus are sufficient and more than adequate to handle this number of cases we’ve hired a significant number of contact tracers we have a significant number of hotel rooms available for quarantine and isolation and so i think we’re well positioned to handle this increase in cases however what i would like to see is us turn the corner and that just doesn’t require the identification identification of close contacts and positive cases but it requires the actions that we need each of you to take to prevent the infections from spreading and so these are the age-old habits that i’ve always talked about washing your hands wearing a face mask keeping your distance from others and avoiding large groups and by all means taking advantage of testing and i have ample evidence that it’s happening well on campus and not well off campus and so i’ve been very pleased to see people wearing their face coverings as i walk about campus and as i drive on university avenue that’s great news but i need you we all need you to make sure that you’re doing those same things off campus in your private lives in social settings and so forth and i know that it’s hard i know it’s hard to be the one person who’s wearing a mask but trust me on this when you start wearing masks others will follow this is what happens when you’re a good leader you take these steps and i have seen pictures and videos from events that have happened off campus that cause me great concern people recklessly gathering in tight spaces in large numbers in close proximity close proximity to each other without face coverings i’ve seen this happen on a number of occasions and what i need you to do is make sure that you take the steps to to avoid having that happen and furthermore the response from some have been well there’s no city ordinance that prevents me from doing this or it’s off campus and the rules on campus don’t apply that’s one way to look at the world the other way to look at the world is your moral responsibility to keep others safe and i ask you when you’re in those situations take the very simple steps of keeping your distance and putting a face covering on there’s a higher purpose here the public safety of all is what you should be marching towards not whether or not there’s an ordinance that tells you what you should be doing so please keep yourself safe take the actions you need to make sure that you keep others safe wear your mask wash your hands keep a distance and avoid large gatherings it’s simple let’s do those right things