Dear Bereans,

This is the campus update for Tuesday, June 14, 2022.  I did an update just last week, but the situation locally has changed a bit and we have a new policy statement to share.

Quarantine update

At this point, similar to last week, we have three students in quarantine (one is quarantining at home and the other two on campus).  We also have five (down from eight last week) current, on-campus employee quarantines.  The work locations of the on-campus employees who are quarantined are: Hafer-Gibson, Edwards, the MAC building (2), and Lincoln Hall.

Policy update

The AC has updated the comprehensive COVID policy for faculty, staff and students, to reflect the current realities of the situation.  Please consult the COVID-19 web site, or you can go directly to the new policy statement by following this link.

Off-Campus Study

At this point nearly all of our students, faculty and staff who were on off-campus study have returned.  One faculty member remains quarantined in an off-campus location, but hopes to return to campus in the next couple of days.

COVID-19 Community Level

In contrast to the situation on campus where case rates are improving slightly, locally and in our state the rates have increased significantly.  As of last Friday, Madison County has turned “Yellow” in terms of COVID-19 Community Level.  Most of the other counties in our area have also gone “Yellow,” although Estill and Jackson are still “Green.”  The Lexington metro counties, Fayette, Woodford and Clark, are now all “Red.”  Much of Eastern Kentucky is also now “Red.”

The CDC level and guidance for these levels can be found here.

The main difference between the CDC recommendations for the “Green” and “Yellow” levels is that indoor masking in congregate settings is recommended for “Yellow,” while it is discretionary for “Green.”  Presently, the persons responsible for most of our congregate settings (classrooms and labor), are given the discretion for masking requirements.  The AC will continue with that approach as our area has now reached the “Yellow” Community Level.  Should we reach “Red,” the AC will return to the requirement of masking in all in-door settings.

Kentucky update

The Commonwealth reports on a weekly basis now:

• numbers of new cases statewide (although I think many cases go unreported as some persons just quarantine on their own after doing a self test and getting a positive result);
• positivity rate (on professionally administered PCR tests);
• and the number of new COVID deaths.

The number of new reported cases in the Commonwealth continues to move upward, but it remains far, far below the earlier surges, where the state had upwards of 10,000 new cases every day.  For the last week we averaged just about 2000 new cases/day in Kentucky in comparison to 1400/day the prior week.  The test positivity rate for the past week is 12.07%, which is down just a little from last week.  The number of deaths in the state is staying fairly low, in comparison to earlier surges.  There were 59 deaths over the last week, for an average daily rate of about 8, which is unchanged from last week.

How should one sum up all of this information?  This amateur epidemiologist sees the omicron subvariants as continuing to make progress in terms of increasing numbers of cases, because of their ability to circumvent vaccination protection.  That enhances the number of cases relative to delta, which was much less able to infect vaccinated persons.  Vaccination does offer significant protection against having a case become serious, and so overall omicron is less lethal than delta, because the vaccinated population has relatively few serious cases, although there are some.  Therefore death rates are significantly below the those experienced during the delta surge, when nearly everyone who got sick was unvaccinated.  This information implies that it is still a VERY GOOD idea to be fully up-to-date on vaccination, but unfortunately, we can expect significant numbers of cases anyway, just not so many serious ones, if nearly everyone is vaccinated.

Stay safe, get vaccinated,
Lyle Roelofs, President
Berea College