Dear Bereans,
This is the update for Monday, May 3, 2021.
Quarantine, testing and vaccination update
I am pleased to announce that there continue to be no positive tests or quarantines among our on-campus employees. We also have no in-person students in any sort of quarantine currently. Well done, Bereans! We love a dashboard with all zeros!
Announcement regarding Wild Health vaccinations
Wild Health will be on campus this Wednesday, May 5th from 12pm – 6pm in Seabury Main Arena. Bereans can sign up by visiting https://kyvax.wildhealth.com. If you’ve had your first shot from Wild Health, make sure you sign up for your second!
Kentucky and Madison County update
The Madison County Health Department reported 6, 8, 7, and 0 (!) new cases for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and yesterday. The number of current active cases is at 83. Our 7-day average of new cases per day remains at 9, keeping us in the Yellow Zone now at 9.7 new cases per day per 100,000 residents. The total number of deaths in the county attributable to COVID-19 as reported by the State remains at 109.
Gov. Beshear reported 723, 646, 368, and 313 new COVID-19 cases and 4, 9, 3, and 5 new deaths for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and today, respectively, in Kentucky. The 7-day average of the number of new cases/day is a bit up at 612 and the average of numbers of deaths/day is down a little to 7. The latest test positivity rate is also up a bit at 3.45%.
Vaccination policy for the fall term
Our announcement for our vaccination policy for in-person students ran in last Thursday’s update. We are also monitoring the policies announced on other campuses. The Chronicle of Higher Education is maintaining a list of “institutions that have decided to issue blanket vaccination requirements of all students, students living on campus, and/or employees.” Currently, there are 190 schools on their roster. Berea College is not yet listed.
The Experience of COVID-19 in a young person
(A friend of the College told me on Friday about the recent experience his college-age daughter has had with COVID-19. I requested his permission to share this with you, since we mostly assume that younger people generally do not have difficult cases. This is not always the case! I removed the names of the friend’s wife and daughters and the name of their home city.)
Yes, about 9 days after H___ got her first vaccine, she contracted COVID (as did her sister N___, withing 24-hours of each other…N____ hadn’t received a shot. What are the odds of two sisters living in NYC about 100 blocks apart getting COVID within a day of each other? They hadn’t seen each other in several weeks.)
N___ recovered within 3 days. But H___ took a nosedive. Since S___ (his wife) had COVID about a year ago, and was vaccinated, she drove to NYC and brought H___ back to ___ (home city). I could do nothing since I was not yet vaccinated…so I stayed in a separate part of the house.
H___ made three trips to the ER in 5 days. I can’t express the anxiety of watching a child not be able to breathe…and not even be able to take her to the hospital. Her respiratory distress eventually damaged her vocal chords. Finally, after IV steroids and whatever else they gave her, she finally stopped getting worse.
She was in bed for several weeks unable to really do anything. In the end, she finally finished writing her play (she is a Theater major). Rather than the usual performance, the actors did a reading online, which S___ and I were able to watch live about a week ago.
H___ will have a long road back…but is already feeling better. The doctors said it will be several months before she feels like herself. She will come back to ___ in a few weeks (after some time with friends in NYC)…then we will work on finding her a job. She wants to live in NYC and work on Broadway or in Television…but, she has missed all her opportunities during the normal recruiting process due to illness. So, she will be a bit on her own. I’m just happy she is on the mend.
Stay safe, stay negative, stay in touch,
Lyle Roelofs, President
Berea College