Dear Bereans,

This is the campus update for Monday, November 1, 2021.   It’s hard to believe that we have gone over 600 days now!

Quarantine, testing and vaccination update

One on-campus student tested positive this morning and will be quarantining.  Over the weekend, we have two new positive test results among on-campus employees, one faculty member in HHP and one staff member in Hafer Gibson, and one close contact.  Hopefully, none of these cases will become serious.

Unfortunately, it was announced today as well, that a child in attendance at the CDL has tested positive for COVID 19. Two classrooms(132 and 136) will have to be closed until next Tuesday.  Our thanks to the staff of the CDL for their good work operating as safely as possible under these challenging circumstances.  It has been verified that there are no unvaccinated close contacts among the staff of the CDL.

Our overall employee vaccination percentage remains at 90%, and, for non-PFE employees, our percentage rounds to 92%.

Kentucky and Madison County update

Declining case numbers continue in our county and state.  Madison County had a total of 144 new cases for the week ending yesterday.  This is down by 18 from last week and lowers the average number of new cases per day to 21, which keeps us in the Orange zone.  The department also reports that at this point 46% of county residents have been fully vaccinated.  (This percentage decreased by 5% from last week, so initially I thought that meant that children 5-11 years old were now included in the denominator, but then I learned that Kentucky has reported an error in tracking vaccination percentage, double counting the vaccinations reported by Kroger.)  Alas, we have had  five more deaths in the county in the last week, which brings the total to 162.

Kentucky reported 8,629 new cases for the week ending today for an average of 1,233 cases/day, down by about 10% from last week’s number.  The Commonwealth has reported 174 deaths over the last week for an average number of deaths/day of 25, so that number has finally started to decline.  (It had been about 35/day for the last three weeks.)  The latest test positivity rate has decreased to 5.03%.   We continue to move in the right direction, albeit rather slowly.

Vaccination policy at other colleges and universities

As of this morning, the Chronicle of Higher Education lists 1,121 schools that are requiring vaccination in the current term, an increase of 30 schools over last week.

Stay safe, get vaccinated, stay in touch,
Lyle Roelofs, President
Berea College