Wagner College’s Covid-19 reporting dashboard is currently one of only four in the country (out of 369) to achieve an A++ rating on a new website that grades collegiate Covid dashboards for transparency and completeness. The others are Amherst College, Johns Hopkins University and East Carolina University.
The rating is shown on We Rate Covid Dashboards, a website created by a group of medical, epidemiology, public health policy and data analytics experts at Yale, Harvard, Baylor and Ohio State universities.
The website evaluates university Covid dashboards on nine criteria that home in transparency, clarity and completeness.
- Is the dashboard easy to read?
- Updated every weekday?
- Are the numbers of positive and negative cases presented?
- Are student and staff results separated?
- Is neighboring community data shared?
- Does it state how often people are being tested?
- And how soon tests come back?
- Does it tell how many students are in isolation or quarantine?
- Does it give a summary of the campus status?
Wagner College earned full marks in all 9 categories, including the frequency of its coronavirus testing and the rapid turnaround of its results. All students are tested every week, while all employees are tested every other week, using the Broad Institute’s PCR test, which processed roughly 1 of every 20 coronavirus tests administered nationwide this fall. Turnaround time for Wagner’s tests has been mostly in the 24- to 48-hour range, with occasional lags of as much as 72 hours.
“Wagner College has taken its responsibility to report on the coronavirus very seriously,” said President Joel W. Martin. “We know that what happens on our campus affects everyone in our community, and we are committed to full and complete transparency in these matters.”
“We have one of the most rigorous Covid testing programs of any university in the country,” said Dr. Christopher Corbo, chair of the college’s biology department and co-chair of the Higher Education Health Analytics Team, which coordinates coronavirus activities between Staten Island’s three colleges, two hospitals, and the borough president’s office. “So far, with the extraordinary cooperation of our students, faculty and staff, that testing program has helped us achieve a very, very low rate of infections among the members of our campus community.”
For complete details, visit our Covid-19 Case Tracker and our Covid-19 information page.
For more about the Broad Institute coronavirus testing program, read this newsclip in our online Newsroom.