Rice University Discovers Inaccurate COVID-19 Positive Rate After Delaying In-person Classes

Rice University in Houston, Texas, announced last week that the first two weeks of the fall semester would be moved online because of a high number of COVID-19 cases among students. It now says the data the decision was based upon is flawed.

In an Aug. 22 letter to the campus community, Rice’s Vice President for Administration Kevin E. Kirby said “anomalies” in the initial testing data have prompted the university to retest dozens of students deemed positive for COVID-19, and “all but one of those have turned out to be negative.”

According to the letter, Rice...