COVID-19 Update – October 5th, 2021

Dear Colleagues,

I hope all is well with you. I have an unusually short email update this time 🙂

The Association has received some questions about the campus vaccination numbers that were shared last week, and I wanted to give you a reassuring update we have received about these numbers.  The university has told us that 95.6​% of students declaring and 97.3% of employees declaring have indicated they are fully vaccinated. Another 3% of students and 1.1​% of employees are partially vaccinated. 

The university has done further investigation into the number of those who have declared their vaccination status via the Thrive app. They have determined that most of those who have not declared are not on campus (students who are learning at a distance, and staff and faculty who are working remotely or on leave). They have found that less than 1 per cent of students and less than 2 per cent of employees who are currently on campus have not declared their vaccination status. This means that approximately 95% of students, faculty and staff who are on campus this term are fully vaccinated. This is a very robust number that should give us more confidence in the safety of our campus.  At the same time, given that vaccinated people can potentially spread the virus to the unvaccinated, as well as the possibility of breakthrough cases, continued masking in all indoor spaces and regular rapid testing for those who are not vaccinated is necessary to more fully protect our campus community.

On a related matter, we are working with CUFA-BC to lobby the government to provide university communities with information about any COVID cases on campus, while respecting the privacy of individuals involved.

 All the very best,

 Lynne