William and Mary had a COVID-19 outbreak following St. Patrick’s day. There was some concern that we might see another such outbreak following two back-to-back spring break days last week (April 6th and 7th). In my last post (Post #1099), I said I’d check in again to see whether there was an uptick following spring break.
We’re now far enough past those days that if there had been an uptick, those new cases should have begun to appear in the data by now. The median time between infection and symptom onset is four-to-five days, and William and Mary seems to turn the test results around in a day or two. So if a number of students had gotten infected on 4/7/2021, the bulk of the resulting positive tests should have appeared by 4/14/2021.
But nothing showed up, to speak of. So far this week they’ve had seven new cases. That’s less than you would have expected to see using the Virginia average rate of new cases for young adults (age 20-29). In short, there’s nothing to suggest a repeat of the St. Patrick’s Day outbreak.
Edit: Typo fixed in the above graphic, courtesy of a sharp-eyed reader. The most recent 7-day test positivity is 0.41% not 41% as originally posted.
