ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The University of Central Florida has created a COVID-19 task force to help track the virus as students prepare to reenter campus this fall.
What You Need To Know
- The task force will test, screen and do contact tracing
- UCF is looking for 10 student volunteers to help with contact tracing
- Get more coronavirus coverage here
The task force is working with the Florida Department of Health in Orange County with testing, screening, contract tracing and surveillance.
UCF has just under 70,000 students. Around 40 people in the campus community have had COVID-19 over the past few months, according to Dr. Michael Deichen, the associate vice president for student health services and the primary medical advisor for the university’s COVID-19 response.
“In some ways we’re fortunate because we’re a tight community, we’re all interconnected,” explained Deichen. “We can easily communicate with each other, so we can apply some really good public health principles.”
One way is through a new screening tool the university is developing through its app. Beginning in July, every employee will go through this procedure on a daily basis. Students will do the same beginning in August.
UCF is also looking for 10 student volunteers to help with contact tracing. Right now, a small team of nurses is tasked with getting in touch with each person who contracts the virus and contacting the people they may have exposed.
This process helps educate best practices and gets people at-risk tested.
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