Uni­ver­si­ties in Den­ver must screen stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, staff, ven­dors and oth­er guests dai­ly and bar any­one expe­ri­enc­ing COVID-19 symp­toms, among oth­er restric­tions announced by city offi­cials Thurs­day in reac­tion to ris­ing case numbers.

Col­lege stu­dents are dri­ving a recent spike in the coro­n­avirus in Den­ver, May­or Michael Han­cock said, and if those increas­es con­tin­ue city offi­cials will impose addi­tion­al restrictions.

“We’ve got to rec­og­nize this is dif­fer­ent, this year is dif­fer­ent and stu­dents have to take these pub­lic health mea­sures seri­ous­ly,” Han­cock said.

Uni­ver­si­ties now must noti­fy the Den­ver Depart­ment of Pub­lic Health and Envi­ron­ment of all pos­i­tive cas­es with­in 24 hours, said Pub­lic Health Direc­tor Bob McDon­ald. They must also more strict­ly enforce face-cov­er­ing man­dates, which now extend to all stu­dent ath­letes, coach­es, train­ers and more.

Ath­letes, coach­es and sup­port staff must wear face cov­er­ings dur­ing prac­tices, games and trav­el, McDon­ald said. Those rules also apply to all teams vis­it­ing Denver.

If a sin­gle pos­i­tive case is con­firmed for a team, that sports pro­gram­ming must be sus­pend­ed until fur­ther notice and city health offi­cials will deter­mine whether team­mates must be quar­an­tined or iso­lat­ed, he said.

At the moment, those rules don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly apply to high school or pro­fes­sion­al sports teams because they’re not a lead­ing source of new cas­es like col­lege stu­dents, McDon­ald said. How­ev­er, that could change in time.

“We’ve seen out­breaks on teams, being spread from team mem­ber to team mem­ber,” McDon­ald said, not­ing that he doesn’t want the prob­lem to reach the point of sus­pend­ing all athletics.

The city also is requir­ing access to col­lege dor­mi­to­ries to be lim­it­ed sole­ly to res­i­dents and essen­tial per­son­nel, McDon­ald said. Cut­ting down on unnec­es­sary vis­its between dorms should help to curb poten­tial spread of the virus.

“I hope we don’t have to issue a sum­mons to uni­ver­si­ties and col­lege stu­dents,” McDon­ald said. “If enforce­ment is nec­es­sary to get com­pli­ance, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Pos­i­tive cas­es are on the rise through­out the state, and Gov. Jared Polis warned this week that a third wave could hit Col­orado. McDon­ald said much of that surge is dri­ven by cas­es around col­lege campuses.

An uptick at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado Boul­der prompt­ed the uni­ver­si­ty to announce ear­li­er this week that it would shift class­es online for at least two weeks, and Boul­der health offi­cials announced new restric­tions Thurs­day morn­ing, includ­ing a ban on gath­er­ings of col­lege-aged residents.

In Den­ver, the new restric­tions apply to all insti­tu­tions of high­er edu­ca­tion, includ­ing Met­ro­pol­i­tan State Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado Den­ver, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Den­ver and Reg­is University.

Should the newest man­dates not work in curb­ing the spread, McDon­ald said his depart­ment will con­sid­er addi­tion­al require­ments, which could include quar­an­tine and iso­la­tion orders, requir­ing vir­tu­al class­es and anoth­er stay-at-home order.