The University of Denver held nearly 170,000 Zoom sessions during the fall quarter and conducted more than 29,800 COVID-19 tests, according to a tally released last week.

The campus news service reported that a total of 1.2 million participants logged on for 74 million minutes of remote activities. There were also 15,685 in-person class sessions during the fall at the institution of approximately 12,000 students.

Chancellor Jeremy Haefner called the university’s mitigation strategy in the fall successful, but noted in a Dec. 18 message that significant discrepancies existed.

“Only 1% of faculty tested positive for the virus over the fall. For staff and graduate students, the positivity rate was just 4%,” he wrote. However, for undergraduate students, the rate reached 11%, soaring up to 31% for athletes and those living in fraternities or sororities.

To facilitate testing, the university worked with National Jewish Health and analyzed sewer samples from residence halls. DU announced in early October that wastewater monitoring enabled it to identify a cluster of COVID-19 RNA before diagnostic testing would have revealed the results. DU also distributed a total of 31,050 masks and installed 1,750 air filters.

Over the past seven days, the test positivity rate at the university was 1.58%, below the statewide rate of 6.09%. The campus’s rate peaked at 6.28% in early November.

Heading into the winter term beginning in January, the university is requiring influenza vaccinations, negative COVID-19 tests and 10-day quarantines prior to students’ return to campus. Mandated testing frequencies at DU range from once every week to once per three weeks.