Concordia University in Irvine is investigating a COVID-19 outbreak on campus, Ann Ashmon, associate vice president of strategic communications, confirmed Friday, Nov. 20.
“We are presently evaluating the extent of a campus outbreak revealed through routine testing in our student population prior to the Thanksgiving break,” Ashmon said in an e-mail. “All affected students and employees, the majority of whom are asymptomatic, are presently transitioning into isolation and quarantine.”
A member of the university’s athletic department, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed testing positive for COVID-19 on Friday and being instructed to quarantine for 10 days and share the result with close family members.
The athletic department member said the COVID-19 test was administered on campus and that contact tracing protocols were followed.
The university’s COVID-19 dashboard was offline Friday night but would return online soon, Ashmon said. She said she can’t reveal the number of positive cases while testing is ongoing.
The Orange County Health Care Agency referred an inquiry about the outbreak to the university.
Orange County moved earlier this week to the purple tier, or widespread risk, in the state’s coronavirus tracking system. The state also recently implemented travel advisories and state-at-home orders because of rising case numbers.
The university’s website indicated on Nov. 17 that the Wellness Center will offer testing appointments for students returning from Thanksgiving travel beginning Monday, Nov. 30.
In September, Concordia announced that it was the first Division II athletic program to phase in practices amid the pandemic.
“Working in conjunction with the NCAA as well as state and local mandates to provide a framework to reach that goal, CUI was able to return to sport-specific practice faster than any other NCAA DII program in the state of California,” the university said in a press release.
The university features more than 500 student-athletes across 24 different sports.
Outbreaks at Orange County universities and schools have been mostly rare in the pandemic. Last month, Chapman University in Orange reported an outbreak of cases.
Since reporting 38 COVID-19 cases at the college level during a week in early October, the most college cases reported by Orange County in a single week has been seven.
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