Jordan Luttrell-Freeman, an epidemiologist for the BCGHD, said for the department to declare an outbreak, careful observations of a specific location and its prevalence compared to the rest of Butler County are recorded.
“Whenever the university is experiencing eight times, 10 times higher than the rest of the county, it can pretty much be said there is something that’s going on at the university that’s not going on at the county,” Luttrell-Freeman said. “And therefore, there’s evidence of increased disease transmission, and so that could be an outbreak.”
On Sept. 23, Miami community members received an email stating COVID-19 cases have “greatly decreased over the past few weeks,” in addition to the BCGHD downgrading the outbreak to a monitoring stage.
According to an email sent to the Journal-News from Ashlea Jones, Miami University’s Interim Senior Director of News and Communication, as of Oct. 10, Miami only has one active case of COVID-19.
Miami University’s decline in COVID-19 cases mirrors Butler County’s decline, as the BCGHD reported that from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1, 305 active cases were reported in the county, which marked a 49% decrease from the previous two weeks. The drop in COVID-19 cases was low enough to downgrade the county to a low-risk community level.
While in a monitoring stage, the BCGHD monitors COVID-19 cases through 28 days or two incubation cycles, to confirm a true decrease in cases was not a case of underreporting.
Luttrell-Freeman said that while Miami’s COVID-19 outbreak has likely come to an end, it is important to ensure it, especially in areas where underreporting might be a risk.
“We have a solid reason to believe that the outbreak is over,” Luttrell-Freeman said.
“However, especially when we’re talking about COVID, and especially when we’re talking about college students, there’s a high risk for underreporting,”
In years past, Luttrell-Freeman said that spikes in outbreaks in a monitoring stage are rare but still can occur. Allowing time to fully monitor the situation gives the community the proper information to be able to prevent a further spread.
“And there’s kind of this behavior that we see where if something gets underreported to a serious degree, you kind of get people who start letting dowing their guard,” Luttrell-Freeman said. “...We don’t want to prematurely call the outbreak over, say ‘Okay, everybody, go back to living your normal lives, the outbreaks over,’ when all of the sudden, it turns out that there actually was kind of an iceberg effect.”
Currently, Miami University is operating under “low-risk” COVID-19 recommendations set out by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which asks students to “Wear a mask based on your personal preference, informed by your personal level of risk.”
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