I appreciate the prior responses from administration. However, I and many of my colleagues and students are wondering where are the updates on WSU COVID vax rates and response rates as the deadline for reporting status for faculty, staff and students has passed? The last update seems to have been late Aug, and I have noticed the Whitman county COVID infection rates are rising precipitously, with overall vax rates for the county not really changed. Where does WSU stand?
Also, the UW has really prepared well for the quarter. They have a UW COVID dashboard, ongoing testing through the Husky Testing program, some schools and programs provide remote accommodations this quarter for immunocompromised individuals and people with unvaccinated children. The UW has made all of these things happen. Where does WSU administration stand at this point? I had understood there was some discussion of a dashboard being reinstated? Is anyone tracking and reporting positive cases on campus?
-Susan Collins, Psychology
WSU is posting semi-weekly updates of vaccination status at the bottom of the covid-19 FAQ page (https://wsu.edu/covid-19/). As of September 22nd, vaccination rates are >95% for all campuses. We anticipate that the compliance numbers will increase dramatically between October 4th and 18th and it appears likely that vaccination rates will remain >90%. Whitman County has a very high rate of COVID-19 cases, although from a normalization perspective, Pullman has the lowest case rate compared to other reporting municipalities (see https://www.whitmancountypublichealth.org/case-data.html).
WSU is working on a dashboard that may be released soon, although it is not clear how much of this will be public facing. People who are immunocompromised can seek accommodations and this has been true from day one. At the last faculty senate meeting, the Provost said she would see what more could be done to help faculty who have to pivot rapidly to deal with unanticipated covid cases or quarantines with children. I’m following up on this.
As a side note, everyone including the decision makers have expressed frustration with how slow things are coming out. These are deliberative processes with legal implications and people are working with limited bandwidth. Thanks for everyone’s patience.