Dear Bereans,
This is the campus update for Monday, February 14, 2022. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!
Quarantine, testing and vaccination update
The news around student quarantines continues to be quite favorable. We have three students presently in quarantine, one on campus and two off campus. One quarantine will complete today and the other two on Wednesday.
As to on-campus employees, we have experienced an increase over last week, but we are still doing quite well. There are a total of nine positive cases in isolation and two close contacts. (Last week it was four and two respectively.)
There are another four positive cases amongst employees who work off-site, mostly with Partners for Education and one close contact.
The work locations of the nine employee isolation cases are as follows: two each in Lincoln Hall and Stevenson; and one each in Draper, Crafts, MAC, FM and IS&S. The close contacts are one each in Draper and the CDL.
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!
New policy for group travel for educational purposes
The previous moratorium against group travel including students expires today, February 14, 2022. Students may travel after today on faculty- or staff-sponsored trips, although the moratorium may be reinstated at any time if pandemic situations warrant to ensure public health. Students participating in any College-sponsored travel must receive a negative COVID-19 test (a rapid, or antigen, test is preferred) before resuming activities on campus, and that result must be documented with Student Life. The faculty or staff sponsor of student travel is responsible for ensuring that students are tested.
Kentucky and Madison County update
For Madison County, the number of new cases over a week has continued to decrease from last week, now quite significantly from 1,096 to 901. Although Madison County is still far into the red zone, there are now four counties in Kentucky that have moved to orange. As usual, COVID deaths lag cases, and, even though our number of new cases is down appreciably, we have had 8 additional COVID deaths in the county since last week for a total now of 241. This is down from 10 last week, but it is still a verylarge number of deaths in just one week. The vaccination rate in the County hit 51.7% this week, continuing a very gradual increase.
Kentucky reported 34,044 new cases for the week ending yesterday, which is a significant decrease from last week, by about 25%. The Commonwealth reported 260 deaths over the last week which is up significantly from the preceding week, so in the state, too, deaths rates are lagging the new case rate. The test positivity rate has continued to decrease from 23.5% last week to 17.9% this week, which is still pretty high.
It is encouraging that the rate of new cases in the state, in our county and on campus are all decreasing substantially. Hopefully, death rates will soon follow that reduction.
Stay safe, get vaccinated and boosted, stay in touch,
Lyle Roelofs, President
Berea College