Dear Truman Community,
We have six active cases on campus, about the same as last week. We look to be in good shape for the end of the semester, but we still encourage students to get vaccinated, perhaps at the “Pop-Up” clinic that will be held in front of Kirk Memorial tomorrow. They will be offering the one-dose J&J vaccine and no appointment is necessary.
https://blogs.truman.edu/news/2021/04/28/last-opportunity-for-on-campus-covid-vaccination-tomorrow/
The good news from the CDC is their updated guidance for those who have been vaccinated. In short, those who have been vaccinated no longer need to wear a mask outdoors, other than at crowded events like concerts and sporting events. Indoors, those who are vaccinated should still wear a mask, but could relax distance expectations in well ventilated areas. Even singing is back as a possibility. While the updated Higher Education Guidance hasn’t come out yet, yesterday’s update makes us hopeful that we can have something like a normal semester in the fall. More information about this new CDC guidance, including a nice chart is here:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/fully-vaccinated-guidance.html
As the year wraps up, we noticed that our overall totals were about 10% of our campus community tested positive. While we wish it were lower, we were able to have a successful academic year, because so many of us were willing to do what we needed to do to make it work. Thanks for your part in sharing good information with students and others so that we could still have an in-person community this year.
This is our last planned video of the school year, so we hope that you have found them helpful. Thanks for your support this year as we tried to answer your questions and provide context for the news this year. We are still happy to serve as a conduit for questions, and we will see if some version of this group is needed in the fall.
Our final eight-minute summary video is here:
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Locations for where to get a vaccine are on the student Blackboard COVID portal, and also posted here:
https://www.truman.edu/coronavirus/
Although we aim these e-mails and videos at Truman faculty and staff, please do share this information or the video with students in your classes, with parents, and elsewhere. This information is shared with all students via Blackboard page, sent directly to all Truman faculty and staff, and shared on our public web page:
https://www.truman.edu/coronavirus/covid-19-working-group-videos/
If you have questions or topics you’d like to know more about, please contact us at: ndmoore@truman.edu
-Faculty Senate COVID-19 Working Group
Nancy Daley-Moore, PhD, Health Science
Christine Harker, PhD, English
Scott Alberts, PhD, Statistics
