Dear Bereans,
This is the campus update for Monday, November 8, 2021.
Quarantine, testing and vaccination update
The on-campus student tested who tested positive last Monday was found to be a false positive and was released from quarantine. There are currently no students in quarantine. As to on-campus employees, we have one person in isolation (Edwards Hall) and four close contacts, one each in the CDL, Hafer Gibson, Stephenson Hall, and IS&S.
It was found that the child at the CDL who had tested positive for COVID 19 last week was another false positive. These false positives on the antigen tests are a serious inconvenience whenever they occur.
Our overall employee vaccination percentage remains at 90%, and, for non-PFE employees, our percentage is 91.5%.
Kentucky and Madison County update
Madison County had a total of 155 new cases for the week ending yesterday. Disappointingly, this is an increase by 11 from last week and raises the average number of new cases per day to 22, which keeps us in the Orange zone. The department also reports that at this point 46.3% of county residents have been fully vaccinated, an increase by 0.3 over last week. Alas, we have had fourteen more deaths in the county in the last week, which brings the total to 176. That is the largest weekly loss of life yet.
Kentucky reported 7,985 new cases for the week ending today for an average of 1,141 cases/day, down by about 7.5% from last week’s number. The Commonwealth has reported 205 deaths over the last week for an average number of deaths/day of 29, which is up a bit from last week. The test positivity rate continues to hover around 5%. Numbers of cases continue to decrease gradually, but deaths remain concerningly high.
Vaccination policy at other colleges and universities
As of this morning, the Chronicle of Higher Education lists 1,130 schools that are requiring vaccination in the current term, an increase of 9 schools over last week.
Stay safe, get vaccinated, stay in touch,
Lyle Roelofs, President
Berea College