OU Announces Pre-Arrival Student Housing COVID-19 Testing Results

NORMAN, OKLA. – The University of Oklahoma reports that 98.63% of students moving into on-campus housing who have received results of their COVID-19 tests are virus-free. Of the 4,516 students who received their results as of Aug. 21, 62 tested positive for COVID-19, for a 1.37% positive rate.

In July, OU announced a mandatory three-step process for all students moving into OU housing on the Norman campus. To gain move-in clearance, students were required to take an at-home saliva-based COVID-19 test, receive a negative test result and complete OU’s online health screening form.

The percentage of students who tested positive for COVID-19 through this process is in close alignment with a predictive model developed by a team of OU researchers, which concluded that there would be an approximate 1.5% positive testing rate among OU students on Aug. 4 and 5 – the dates that the majority of the saliva-based tests were taken.

Students who tested positive were required to stay home and away from campus until they were cleared by OU Health Services to move to campus. Students whose tests produced an inconclusive result were required to retest.

Because students will continue moving into OU residential facilities over the next few weeks, the testing process is still being conducted for the remaining 237 students yet to move in.

The university is closely monitoring COVID-19 data and is developing an online dashboard, which is set to launch next week.