It's been a tough few weeks for students at Central Michigan University when it comes to COVID-19. Since students returned, cases have grown to 134 at CMU. Now officials are working to stop the spread.

Starting Monday, CMU started offering COVID-19 testing on campus. The testing program will be available at no charge to students and staff member of CMU. "We are testing at this point with potential symptoms, it can be allergy symptoms, it can be a simple cold, we are not taking chances,” said Dean of College of Medicine, Dr. George Kikano.

Since students started returning to the Mt. Pleasant campus the Central Michigan District Health Department saw a cases increase quickly. Positive cases grew at a rapid  rate between Monday, August 24th and Sunday, August 30th  than officials saw during the week of August 17th. CMU found 63 new cases over the past week, compared to the  54 cases they had during week before.

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Kikano indicated they will not be implementing campus-wide testing for everyone though. Anyone who displays symptoms will be tested, as well as those without symptoms, but have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus. Those who undergo the testing will be put under quarantine until test results come back if they fall in those categories.

Dr. Kikano told ABC-12, "CDC guidelines does not recommend testing, if they do we will be happy to follow. But we are not stopping there, we are going above and beyond testing guidelines. if you test everyone on campus today, they might get something later this week in a couple of days, three days later. So there are limitations in how often you can test."

CMU President Bob Davies is also working to make sure that large gatherings and parties are not becoming hot spot situations on campus. In a letter to students and the community he outlined strict protocol and even eliminated actives that could lead to the  spread of the virus such as Greek Life activities.

 

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