Virginia Tech launches COVID-19 dashboard

Students, faculty can keep track of positive cases, total number of tests

Published August 19, 2020 by Sydney Lake

Burruss Hall at Virginia Tech. Photo courtesy Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech on Wednesday launched an online dashboard that the university will use to keep track of COVID-19 test results and the number of students in on-campus isolation spaces.

“Our comprehensive plan to manage the additional cases expected as the Blacksburg campus is repopulated includes close collaboration with our campus experts and community partners,” Virginia Tech President Tim Sands said in a statement. “Timely and transparent information will help us work together effectively in support of our ongoing efforts to protect the health and safety of our communities, both on and off campus.”

Students who are living on campus during the fall semester are required to be tested for COVID-19 during move in, and university employees are expected to check in through the Hokie Ready app, which helps users perform a health symptom self-check before coming to work each day.

The dashboard — maintained by Virginia Tech Emergency Management — will be updated each Monday to report the number of COVID-19 test results, which will include positive test results and total tests done through the university’s Schiffert Health Center. The dashboard will also display the number of students in isolation on campus who have tested positive for the virus. The dashboard lists only numbers, not individual identifying information, and it is HIPAA-compliant, Kevin Foust, associate vice president for safety and security at Virginia Tech, said in a statement.

“Because we are a public university, we want people to be informed about our campus,” he said in a statement. “We want to make sure that we provide the best information we can so that they can make those informed decisions. It’s designed to help our community understand COVID-19 on our campus.”

Users can also access the Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association’s websites for additional COVID-19 information.

“If the expectation is that this campus and our community will be totally free of COVID-19, that is an unrealistic expectation,” Foust said in a statement. “The goal is for us to discover it and mitigate the spread as best as we can. This is one way to help us do that.”