Dear Bereans,
This is the campus update for Monday, January 31, 2022. I apologize for its length.
Free tests available in Richmond and Berea
Madison County Public Health has announced a giveaway of rapid, at-home COVID tests. They are free with a limit of 2 kits (4 tests) per household, until quantities are exhausted. Here are the locations and times for the giveaways.
| TUESDAY
February 1, 2022 |
THURSDAY
February 3, 2022 |
| Madison County Health Department
214 Boggs Lane RICHMOND, KY |
Madison County Health Department
1001 Ace Drive BEREA, KY |
| 9:00 AM-Noon
and 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM |
9:00 AM-Noon
and 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM |
Quarantine, testing and vaccination update
The news around student quarantines is pretty positive, so fingers crossed that this improvement will continue! Eleven students from last week completed quarantine (six on-campus and five off). We have had new cases among on-campus students, five altogether, four of whom are in isolation on campus and one off. Among returning students, a total of 155 had positive tests and had to delay, and, at this point, only three students have not yet been able to join us on campus.
As to on-campus employees, we continue to have quite a number of cases, consistent with what is happening locally. There are a total of 15 positive cases in isolation and three close contacts. (Last week it was 17 and two respectively.)
There are seven positive cases amongst employees who work off-site, mostly with Partners for Education (down one from last week). One of the latter cases has resulted in hospitalization, our first in the last several months, so please keep that person in your thoughts and prayers.
The nominal work locations (many folks are working off-campus still) of the 15 isolation cases are as follows: three positives in Seabury Center; two each in the CDL, Hafer-Gibson, and Facilities; and one each in the Farm/Farm Store, Stephenson, the MAC building, Marketing and Communications, Strategic Initiatives, and Danforth Technology. The close contacts are one each in Facilities, Stevenson, and the Library.
Our employee vaccination percentages have stayed about the same from last week: overall 92%, and for non-PFE employees 94%. Well done, Bereans! Get that booster, too, when you are eligible! Let’s keep all these omicron cases we’re having as uncomplicated as possible!
An invitation from Counseling Services, HEART and Thrive!
We want to inform all students about a campus-wide program coming soon to assist all students in Kick-Starting Connections at Berea College after a bumpy start to the semester.
Students can choose from 5 different times during Feb 10-12, to sign up to attend the kick-off event. During the kick-off sessions, students will put together a “kit” that will help them connect – to others and themselves. The kit contains a reusable lunch bag, grief/gratitude jar, stickers with mindfulness skills outlined, post cards to send, worry stone, and a selection of reminder cards that they can choose from to remind them of what is important. The kit also includes a “Connection Grid” of 25 things that can be done to foster connection. Once completed, the student submits their grids and earns a t-shirt. The grid has things to do such as invite someone you don’t know well to join you and your friends at your lunch table, turn off your electronic devices for an hour, share a compliment, etc. Our goal was to create a program that continues beyond one event. The grief/gratitude jar helps with this as well as the grid. To start, the jars will be used to collect slips of paper noting any griefs or disappointments experienced. At a future event, these slips of paper will be burned. Then, the jar is converted in a gratitude jar – where positives things are noted and collected.
This program is sponsored by HEART, Thrive!, and Counseling Services and is made possible by a generous donor whose goal is to promote the mental health of all of our students.
To sign up for one of the kick-off events, go to Berea Engage.
Kentucky and Madison County update
For Madison County, the number of new cases over a week has continued to decrease from last week, just a bit though from 1,717 to 1686. All of Kentucky remains far into the red zone. According to state reporting we have had one additional COVID death in the county for a total now of 223. The vaccination rate in the County hit 51.3% this week, continuing a gradual increase.
Kentucky reported 75,507 new cases for the week ending yesterday, which is actually a small increase from last week. The Commonwealth reported 197 deaths over the last week which is also an increase. On the positive side the test positivity rate finally decreased a bit and is now about 28.5%.
While the state data is not yet showing a drop in cases, the improvements in both the county rates and our on-campus rates are promising.
Mask comparisons
Some Bereans, having learned that the cloth masks we depended on in earlier phases of the pandemic are not recommended for protecting the wearer from the omicron variant, have been asking questions about the efficacy of various available masks. College staff have gathered some information that may be of interest. Please see the attached .pdf for some useful information. N-95’s, which are readily available in small quantities, are the best choice, although if fitted properly, they are not as comfortable to wear because of the lower breathability.
The College considered providing N-95’s for all Bereans but elected not to because there are stringent legal requirements about fit tests that are not feasible for us. We therefore ordered a large quantity of ASTM Level 2 masks and have distributed these to everyone. Note that they do have high efficiency in filtering particles at the 0.1 micron level, although not quite as good as the N-95’s.
This comparison does not mention KN-95’s, which are the Chinese version of N-95’s and are more readily available. The following NYT article gives some useful information.
Finally, there is the issue of how often you can wear an N-95 or a KN-95 mask before disposing of it. Medical personnel wear a mask only once, but CDC advice suggests that for the rest of us multiple uses until the mask is dirty or difficult to breathe through are OK.
I personally find the KN-95 to be a good compromise between protection and comfort.
Interesting article
Throughout the pandemic, I have been paying attention to comparisons to the last global pandemic, the so-called Spanish Flu pandemic, that affected nearly all countries in the world about 100 years before we were beset by COVID-19. There are interesting records in the College Archives on how that pandemic was experienced in Berea and at the College, and I think I have shared some of that before. There is an interesting essay in today’s New York Times about those comparisons, now that we are in the 4thsurge, and lessons that can be learned from how our country reacted to the 4th surge of that prior pandemic. If you are interested, here is the link. “What We Can Learn from How the 1918 Pandemic Ended?”
Stay safe, get vaccinated and boosted, stay in touch,
Lyle Roelofs, President
Berea College