NC State athletics announced Thursday that it has tested 315 student-athletes, staff members and coaches that have returned to campus so far and only had five positive coronavirus tests.

That equates out to just 1.6 percent of administered tests that came back showing that Wolfpackers had COVID-19.

On The Wolves' Den message board, our staff has been tracking testing results released around the country, and that is one of the lower percentages of results we've seen.

Yesterday, rival North Carolina announced it has temporarily suspended voluntary football workouts for at least a week after 37 of its 429 tests came back positive for COVID-19 (8.6 percent). Ohio State has similarly paused voluntary workouts, although they did not reveal the number of coronavirus cases.

NC State is in the midst of its 'four-phase' plan for athletes to return to campus, which director of athletics Boo Corrigan announced June 2.

At that point, Wolfpack athletes were already in phase one, which included voluntary workouts for locally-based football and men's and women's basketball players after being cleared via a COVID-19 test.

The second phase began no later than June 20 and had those full squads returning to campus.

Phase three will welcome back the remaining fall sports athletes — men's and women's soccer, men's and women's cross country, and volleyball — before the return of all remaining athletes in conjunction with the start of the fall semester, which is scheduled to begin Aug. 10, nine days earlier than originally planned.

The ACC also announced Thursday that it is slightly delaying the start of competition in the fall to Sept. 1. NC State football's season opener is currently scheduled for Sept. 2 at Louisville, but other sports like soccer, volleyball and cross country will be affected.

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