GREENSBORO, N.C. — North Carolina A&T confirmed a coronavirus cluster on campus Friday. University health officials said eight students tested positive for the virus in the Pride Hall dorm.
Health officials define a cluster as five or more positive cases in close proximity to one another.
"Any college campus that has a cluster like this has to redouble efforts in order to contain the transmission," Cone Health Chief Physician Dr. Bruce Swords said.
A university spokesperson said the school has begun contact tracing and testing other students who may have been infected. Students who have tested positive have the option to move into the university's isolation/quarantine dorm or return home to complete their quarantine period, according to a release.
"We're moving aggressively to test the rest of the members of that residence hall. Many of whom had already been tested but we're gonna put everybody through a round of testing," University Relations Associate Vice Chancellor Todd Simmons said.
Many students wore masks as they walked around campus Friday. Swords said it may be part of the reason why the university went so long without having a case cluster.
Several North Carolina Universities including Appalachian State University and UNC-Chapel Hill started seeing clusters earlier in the semester.
"If they've delayed their first cluster several weeks after the start of the semester, they've probably done a really good job of keeping people away from each other and containing the spread," Swords said.
Residence halls can be a difficult place to social distance according to Swords. Simmons said health officials discovered the cluster in Pride Hall through campus-wide testing that targeted residence halls.
"We received a shipment of rapid response tests from the Federal Government and we deployed those so that we could get as strong a baseline as possible before the University and everyone else moved into flu season," Simmons said.
Simmons said many of the students in the cluster are asymptomatic.
NC A&T said students who live at Pride Hall or have visited the dorm in the last three days should come to the Student Health Center for COVID testing either Friday or Monday. Testing will also be available for Pride Hall for residents.
The Guilford County Health Department isn't commenting on any possible cases.
Simmons said university health officials are leading contact tracing efforts on campus.