While local and national COVID-19 rates have increased since the end of summer as school began and outdoor activities were moved inside, there has been an accelerated increase in cases since the Thanksgiving holiday. This rise in cases comes at the same time that a new variant, Omnicron, has entered the conversation on COVID-19 nationally and globally.
"This is a trend that we see every year, around this time of year," Swarts said. "... When you get into the colder months and start getting people indoors and gathering that's when we started to see a spike, so I think coupled with all of that we can't change the weather, we can't change the holidays, we can't change some human behavior, so we're just trying our best now to you know mitigate that extra positive cases as we find them to make sure that there's not any further communal spread."
Swarts said if communal spread begins to occur, it will be handled on an individual basis by determining where the communal spread is happening. He encouraged people to participate in voluntary testing on campus, follow safety guidelines, stick to a small group of friends, and to hold each other accountable.