TALLAHASEE, Fla. — More than 850 Florida State University students and staff have tested positive for Covid-19 since the beginning of August, campus officials announced this week, with a surge of more than 700 cases in the last week. 

The uptick comes amid a string of off-campus parties that have administrators and some students concerned about the continued feasibility of this fall's limited in-person class schedule.

Roughly 30 percent of FSU students have opted to attend face-to-face classes this semester and have been strongly encouraged to take advantage of rapid testing being offered by the university. Through September 4, 11,653 students and staff had been tested, yielding a positivity rate of 7.32 percent.

In an interview Tuesday, FSU President John Trasher attributed much of the rising case counts to a campus-wide Covid-19 testing program he said was especially aggressive. Still, he said, the rising positivity rate is cause for concern.

"There were some off-campus parties that we knew about that we thought would have an impact on those numbers," Thrasher said. "We're taking care of those, we're quarantining, we're doing the necessary follow-up of some of those cases, so I feel like we're on the right track.

"But we've got to continue to get our message out to the students that we can't continue face-to-face classes if we're going to have these kinds of numbers."

He declined to identify a specific point at which he would consider shifting in-person classes to virtual instruction, deferring to the judgment of medical professionals, including Florida Surgeon General Scott Rivkees.

Some students, however, are taking a more pessimistic view of the situation. 

Katie Lettera, a freshman who said she chose to attend in-person classes to better fulfill her dream of attending FSU, predicted the parties would wind up bringing a premature end to the semester.

"I'm not surprised. I'm disappointed, though," she said. "A lot of people who were there weren't actually living in that area, either, so it's like they just walked in. Like, it wasn't even friends of friends, or whatever. They just walked in. So, it's just very disappointing to me that people are doing this type of stuff right now."