Dear Bereans,

This is the update for Monday, June 28, 2021.

Quarantine, testing and vaccination update

No on-campus students or employees are in any sort of quarantine at present.  We are at about 80% employees (83% of non-PFE employees) who have documented their fully vaccinated status.  WELL DONE BEREANS!

Kentucky and Madison County update

The Madison County Health Department reported 7, 1, 5, and 3  new cases for Monday through Thursday last week.  They did not report their Friday and Saturday numbers, but did note that there were no cases reported yesterday.  The number of current active cases has decreased significantly to 28.  Because of the missing data, I am not able to provide 7-day average of new cases per day, but I think it has increased to 5.  We are still in the Yellow Zone now at 3.5 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 112.

Gov. Beshear reported 208, 210, 204, 218, 161, 70, and 69 new COVID-19 cases and 4, 2, 4, 4, 3, 3, and 2 new deaths for Tuesday through today, respectively, in Kentucky.  The 7-day average of the number of new cases/day has decreased to 142 and the average of numbers of deaths/day has decreased to 3.  The latest test positivity rate is down to 1.87%.

Starting with the campus update for next week, I will not be giving the daily breakdown of cases in Madison County and the Commonwealth of Kentucky.  I will continue to provide the 7-day averages and noting any apparent trends.

Vaccination policy at other colleges and universities

As of this morning, the Chronicle of Higher Education lists 542 schools that will require vaccination in the fall.

Vaccination information

• In the news last week was the worrisome information about outbreaks of the delta variant of COVID-19 in rural areas of Missouri and Colorado, parts of those states where vaccination rates are very low.  A concern, of course, is that we have similar regions of low vaccination rates in our state, as do other parts of Appalachia.  Even in Madison County, the vaccination rate is only about 50%.  Another concern is that these outbreaks are affecting a younger population than earlier in the pandemic.  The delta variant is causing an outbreak in California, as well.
• Rates of new COVID-19 infection have continued to decrease gradually to now a fairly low rate in Kentucky–see above for the Kentucky information. Nearly all of the new cases are among the unvaccinated.  Dr. Steve Stack reported in a press conference last Thursday that “99.92% of all Kentuckians who’ve tested positive for the virus over the last four weeks were not vaccinated.  … Additionally, 99% of people hospitalized with the virus weren’t vaccinated, and neither were 93.1% of the people who died from the virus over the last month.”  Clearly, the only way to more rapidly reduce rates of illness, hospitalization and deaths at this point is to encourage more Kentuckians to get vaccinated!

Stay safe, stay negative, stay in touch,
Lyle Roelofs, President
Berea College