Initially opting not to close down after Thanksgiving like other UW campuses had decided, the University of Wisconsin at River Falls announced November 12 that college courses would switch to remote instruction for the remaining three weeks of the semester after November 30. Coinciding with this announcement, the seven-day positivity rate for COVID-19 hit 4.64 percent November 11 after before falling back somewhat to 4.52 percent on November 12, after making initially making it to November 8 with a 2.55 percent seven-day positivity test rate.

Taken as an average of the past seven days, the sevenday positivity rate can be affected by a single day spike in positive test results, though the daily positive rate for COVID-19 test results also rose before falling at the end of the week, closing out November 12 with a cumulative 346 cases over the school year. Beginning the week of November 6 and ending seven days later on November 12, these are the COVID-19 positive test numbers for UW-River Falls.

Starting off Friday November 6, the total number of positive test results was 15 from a total test number of 305, for daily positive rate of 4.91 percent, with 288 cases to date and 5.21 percent of total positives overall, dividing the daily total by the overall total. Nothing changes for the dashboard over the weekend of November 7 thru November 8, though no tests were taken or reported during this time either.

Beginning November 9 this all changes, with 16 additional positive test results out of a total 322 received, calculating out to a daily positive rate of 4.97 percent, changed to 5.26 percent when taking the daily number of positive tests (16) and dividing by the total number of positive tests since school began, up to 304 with Monday’s results. Falling and rising percentages for daily positive results as opposed to overall positive tests can indicate where things are headed case-wise.

Moving to Tuesday November 10 then, there were an additional 24 positive test results for a positive rate of 7.62 percent for the day with 315 total test reports. This number however, shifts down to just 7.32 percent of total positive test results for the school year when the daily positive tests (24) are divided by the overall positive tests up to Tuesday (328). With that in mind, Thursday, November 11 saw a total daily positive rate of 5.24 percent, with 14 tests being positive out of a total 267 completed. This shifts down to 4.09 percent when the daily positive tests (14) are divided by the overall number of positive tests at River Falls (342).

Finally for November 12, the numbers show a positive test rate of 1.41 percent for the day or four out of 283 total tests. This number falls to 1.16 percent when the four positives from November 12 are divided by the overall positive test results (346). The seven-day positivity rate, meanwhile, stood at 4.52 percent November 12, showing a rise over the start of the week and with months of cold weather yet to come.