Coronavirus latest: University reports 90% jump in cases on campus

The University of Mississippi said it has confirmed at least 481 cases of COVID-19 among students and employees on its Oxford campus since the start of the pandemic.

Of those, 277 are active cases, mostly among students. Over the past seven days, there have been 223 new confirmed cases, an increase of more than 90%. There are currently 20 active outbreaks of three or more cases on campus, most of which are within campus housing, according to data posted on the University of Mississippi’s website.

The public research university in Oxford, Mississippi, known by its nickname Ole Miss, resumed classes on Aug. 24.

According to the student newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, emails were sent out saying residents in on-campus dormitories with a cluster of three or more cases would need to find a place to quarantine. However, some students were urged to return home or isolate themselves off-campus in nearby apartments or hotels due to the limited number of quarantine spaces on campus.

Health officials are concerned this could lead to COVID-19 spreading off-campus among the local community, according to a report by Memphis ABC affiliate WATN.

An internal memo from the Federal Emergency Management Agency obtained by ABC News on Tuesday evening shows that 16 U.S. states and territories are in an upward trajectory of new COVID-19 cases, while 10 jurisdictions are at a plateau and 30 are going down.

Nationwide, the numbers of new COVID-19 cases and new deaths have both decreased in week-over-week comparisons. There were 288,876 new cases confirmed during the period of Aug. 25-31, a 1.9% decrease from the previous seven-day period. There were also 6,433 new fatalities recorded, marking a 5.1% decrease compared with the previous week, according to the memo.

Meanwhile, the national positivity rate for COVID-19 tests ticked downward slightly to 5.2%, compared with 5.5% for the prior seven-day period, the memo shows.

Indiana has the ninth-highest case rate in the country, with more than 100 new cases per 100,000 population last week. The state’s positivity rate for COVID-19 tests is nearing 10% amid a rapid case rise linked to university towns. More than half of all counties in Indiana have ongoing community transmission, of which 8% have high levels of community transmission, according to the memo.

South Dakota has the highest positivity rate for COVID-19 tests of any U.S. state, at greater than 15%, according to the memo, which noted that “testing across the state is broadly insufficient.” Approximately 30% of all counties in South Dakota have ongoing community transmission and 21% have high levels of community transmission, the memo shows.

In Ohio, the majority of new cases are among Miami University student-athletes and the people they have come in contact with since Aug. 17. As of Aug. 27, there have been 215 reported cases among students and two reported cases among employees at the public research university in Oxford, Ohio, according to the memo.

ABC News’ Josh Margolin contributed to this report.

An additional 1,067 coronavirus-related deaths were recorded in the United States on Tuesday, a nearly twofold increase from the previous day, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

It's the first time in almost a week that the nation has reported more than 1,000 new deaths from COVID-19 in a single day. However, Tuesday’s death toll is still under the country’s record set on April 17, when there were 2,666 new fatalities in a 24-hour-reporting period.

There were also 43,253 new cases of COVID-19 identified in the United States on Tuesday. The daily tally is well below the record 77,255 new cases reported on July 16.

A total of 6,075,652 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 184,689 of them have died, according to Johns Hopkins. The cases include people from all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C. and other U.S. territories as well as repatriated citizens.

By May 20, all U.S. states had begun lifting stay-at-home orders and other restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. The day-to-day increase in the country's cases then hovered around 20,000 for a couple of weeks before shooting back up and crossing 70,000 for the first time in mid-July.

However, the numbers of new COVID-19 cases and new deaths in the United States have both decreased in week-over-week comparisons, according to an internal memo from the Federal Emergency Management Agency obtained by ABC News Tuesday night.