Coronavirus updates: FSU president tests positive after attending football game

Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, has suspended more than 100 students for violating the school's COVID-19 policies, according to a report by New Haven ABC affiliate WTNH.

University officials confirmed to WTNH that there have been at least 109 suspensions since the start of the fall semester due to various health and safety violations that include not wearing face masks, not social distancing and having unauthorized visitors in residence hall rooms.

The suspended students were informed that they cannot come back to campus for periods ranging from one week to the rest of the semester. They will continue to attend classes remotely in the meantime, according to WTNH.

University leaders hope the suspensions send a clear message that the coronavirus pandemic remains a very real threat and that safety is the number one goal for a successful semester back on campus.

"We want everyone to protect themselves and protect each other so that we can end the semester here on campus and have a full semester of on-campus, on-ground learning,"Larry Weilk, dean of students at Sacred Heart University, told WTNH. "Prior to the start of the year, we developed what we call a pioneer promise where we asked all students faculty and staff to promise to protect themselves, the campus community, and the greater Bridgeport and Fairfield community as well."

"We’re all in this together," he added. "We’re all trying to protect each other and stay healthy."

An internal memo from the Federal Emergency Management Agency obtained by ABC News on Monday night shows that 33 U.S. states and territories are in an upward trajectory of COVID-19 infections, while 4 jurisdictions are at a plateau and 19 others are in a downward trend.

Both the number of new cases and the number of new deaths reported across the United States were  down Monday in week-over-week comparisons. There were 301,308 new cases confirmed during the period of Sept. 28-Oct. 4, a 2.5% decrease from the previous week. There were also 4,871 coronavirus-related fatalities recorded during the period of Sept. 28-Oct. 4, a 8.2% decrease compared with the week prior, according to the memo.

However, the national positivity rate for COVID-19 tests increased slightly from 4.4% to 4.7% in week-to-week comparisons. Currently, 20% of hospitals across the country have more than 80% of beds full in their intensive care units. That figure was 17-18% during the summertime peak, the memo said.

In Alabama, COVID-19 cases accounted for 9.2% of the state's inpatients during the week ending Sept. 29. The number of new cases nearly tripled in the western city of Tuscaloosa -- from 562 to 1,549 -- between the weeks ending Sept. 22 and Sept. 29, according to the memo.

In Colorado, there was a 42.2% relative increase in the number of new COVID-19 cases in Adams County between the weeks ending Sept. 22 and Sept. 29, driven by people under the age of 20. Meanwhile, nearly 80% of cases recorded in the northern city of Boulder since Aug. 24 have been linked to the University of Colorado, the memo said.

In Hawaii, there was a cluster of nine COVID-19 cases confirmed at the University of the Nations Kona campus in the town of Kailua-Kona, according to the memo.

ABC News' Josh Margolin contributed to this report.

There were 39,562 new cases of COVID-19 identified in the United States on Monday, according to a real-time count kept by Johns Hopkins University.

Monday's tally is far below the country’s record set on July 16, when there were 77,255 new cases in a 24-hour-reporting period.

An additional 460 coronavirus-related fatalities were also recorded Monday, down from a peak of 2,666 new fatalities reported on April 17.

A total of 7,458,549 people in the United States have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began, and at least 210,195 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. The daily tally of new cases has gradually come down since then but has hovered around 40,000 in recent weeks.