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UT Austin reports 72 student COVID cases after first week of classes

The University of Texas at Austin reported 72 COVID cases among students on Wednesday.
The University of Texas at Austin reported 42 new COVID-19 cases among students on Wednesday, bringing its total caseload to 72 since classes began last week.
This jump follows confirmation on Monday that two students living in on-campus residence halls had tested positive for the disease. Last weekend, residents of the off-campus Scottish Rite Dormitory received notification that one of their peer residents had tested positive for COVID.
UT Austin's COVID-19 dashboard shows 42 new cases among students were reported Wednesday.(UT Austin COVID-19 Dashboard)
The university said in early August that it aimed to test up to 5,000 asymptomatic members of its campus community each week. Since Sunday, the university has tested 1,072 students, faculty and staff, with 18 returning positive results, according to its public dashboard.
This puts the university's positivity rate at around 1.6%. In comparison, Travis County reported a positivity rate of 6.2% last week.
Remember how I said @UTAustin had reported 24 student COVID-19 cases in September? That number has more than doubl… https://t.co/fhLF8uMJQM— Megan Menchaca (@Megan Menchaca) 1599109523.0
Researchers at UT Austin's own COVID-19 Modeling Consortium conservatively estimated between 82 and 183 students would return to campus with the disease during the first week of classes.
The research team, led by consortium director and professor of integrative biology Dr. Lauren Ancel Meyers, arrived at this estimate by assuming 22,000 students will return to campus—less than half of the university's total enrollment —and that 0.5% of them will be infected, based on the estimated prevalence of COVID-19 in the Austin metro and students' home counties in mid-August.
"Contacts between residents end returning students may exacerbate risks, fuel transmission and deplete public health resources," the researchers wrote in a report published on Aug. 20.
Before classes even started, there was backlash online as a photo circulated on social media showing an off-campus gathering of Greek life members.
Photo taken by my colleague on UT’s west campus today. Sorority rush. No masks, but if you look closely they are we… https://t.co/pfqDihZ18V— Catherine Weaver (@Catherine Weaver) 1598317015.0
In an Aug. 21 email sent to the campus community, UT Austin Interim President Jay Hartzell said the university will consider a number of metrics in deciding whether to move more classes online or close buildings on campus in the coming weeks.
Other area colleges are also reporting COVID cases in the wake of their reopening.
St. Edward's University, a private Catholic school in South Austin, reported seven positive results out of 2,173 tests conducted during the week ending Thursday.
Between July 6 and Aug. 28, Austin Community College reported eight cases among students and four among employees.
Huston-Tillotson University, a private historically Black university in East Austin, is conducting its fall semester entirely online.
A number of colleges and universities across the country—including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Notre Dame—recently shifted to online instruction after outbreaks occurred on their campuses.
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Popular
(Bob Daemmrich)
Hours following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, on Friday, about 1,000 people gathered in Republic Square with signs calling for change.
The rally, organized by the group Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights Texas, started at the federal courthouse on Republic Square on Friday at 5 p.m. before the crowd marched to the Texas Capitol. More protests are expected to ensue over the weekend.
People showed up with all types of signs like Mindy Moffa holding up, "Keep your filthy laws off my silky drawers."
Austin joined cities across the country that saw protests for a women's right to an abortion after the ruling.
According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
Sabrina Talghade and Sofia Pellegrini held up signs directed at Texas laws. A Texas trigger law will ban all abortions from the moment of fertilization, starting 30 days after the ruling. When state legislators passed the trigger law last summer, it also passed laws for more protection of firearms, including the right to open carry without a permit.
Lili Enthal of Austin yells as around 1,000 Texans marched to the Texas Capitol.
From the Texas Capitol, Zoe Webb lets her voice be heard against the Supreme Court ruling.
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(Paxton Smith/Instagram)
Paxton Smith’s 2021 valedictory speech at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas wasn’t the same speech she had previously shared with school administrators. She dropped the approved speech and made a case for women’s reproductive rights after lawmakers passed the Texas "Heartbeat Bill.”
Her advocacy made news on NPR, YouTubeTV and in The Guardian. Just over a year later, the “war on (women’s) rights” she forewarned has come to a head as the U.S. Supreme Court voted Friday morning to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortion access.
“It is up to the people to show up and show the courts and the politicians that we won’t sit back and let this happen,” Smith told Austonia Friday morning. “We will show up, we will fight back. Before, we were scared of them, now they should be scared of us.”
Now a University of Texas sophomore and abortion rights activist, 19-year-old Smith said she wanted to give the same speech in the “the most public way possible” to reach “as many people as possible who don't agree that I deserve this right.”
However, she says the response was “actually overwhelmingly positive” and supportive of her cause. According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
The speech opened up further opportunities for activism: she advocated for reproductive rights at the International Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, interviewed with Variety magazine and spoke to tens of thousands at Austin’s Bans Off Our Bodies protest at the Texas Capitol in May.
Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national nonprofit organization that helps fund abortions or medication abortion—like Plan C pills—in all 50 states. Most recently, Smith has been attending protests in Washington, D.C. leading up to the ruling.
“This is land of the free. This is where you get to choose how you live your life,” Smith said. “Overturning Roe v. Wade violates everything that we have come to believe about what it means to live in this country. I think a lot of people aren't willing to accept that this is a human right that is most likely just going to be gone for over half of the country within the next couple of weeks.”
Bracing for the next steps, Smith gave some tips for supporters:
- Find a protest to attend.
- “I would say invite somebody to go to those protests with you, invite a couple of friends, invite people into the movement,” Smith said.
- Talk about the issue on social media—use the platform you have.
- “Have these kinds of conversations where people can just talk about their fears and then find ways to go and advocate for yourself,” Smith said.
- Volunteer at a nonprofit near you.
“I feel like a lot of the reason things have gotten as bad as they have within the abortion rights world is that people are not making a scene, not protesting, not putting the effort into ensuring that the government doesn't take away this right,” Smith said. “I want to emphasize that if you're not doing anything, don't expect the best scenario, expect the worst because that's the direction that we're going in.”
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