Yahoo Lifestyle NC State becomes latest school to pause athletic activities due to COVID-19 outbreak
Another FBS program has paused its athletic activities due to a COVID-19 outbreak.
This time it’s NC State, which announced Monday that it is temporarily halting athletic activities in all sports “due to an identified cluster within its programs.” The university announced it is dealing with three new COVID-19 clusters, which North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services defines as five or more cases in close proximity. NC State has reported 14 clusters in all.
One of those clusters is the aforementioned situation in the NC State athletic department and includes 27 positives. The school did offer specifics but did say that not all of the cases involve athletes.
An NC State official said the school has issued 2,053 tests to athletes, coaches and staff with 30 total positives. Of those positives, 22 (out of 693 new tests) have occurred since the last time the school reported its testing numbers about two weeks ago.
“Based on the information available to us, we are making the necessary and swift decision to pause athletic-related activities until we have additional information,” Wolfpack athletic director Boo Corrigan said. “We will continue to work with all appropriate parties to evaluate the most responsible path moving forward and will provide further details when available."
The announcement of positive tests on campus comes the same day NC State proceeded with all undergraduate classes in an online setting only. The university announced that decision on Aug. 20 when there were more than 500 students in quarantine/isolation housing. NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson cited large parties in off-campus apartments and Greek life and other behaviors “outside of our community standards and the governor’s mandates” in addressing the spike of COVID-19 cases.
NC State began in-person classes on Aug. 10 and is one of many universities to experience a wave of COVID-19 cases with students back on campus. North Carolina, Notre Dame and East Carolina are among the other universities to move classes online after predictably experiencing COVID-19 cases in their respective communities once the student body returned.
UNC paused athletic activities before allowing some programs to resume practice on Sunday. The football team returned to practice on Monday.
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