Continued COVID-19 Regulations on Campus
Two years after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Santa Clara maintains precautions against COVID-19
“The mask policy will be re-evaluated on a regular basis, and may be revised if conditions change,” said Acting Provosts Kate Morris and Ed Ryan in an email in March of this year. Since this email, mask mandates on campus have not changed. Masks are still required in nearly every classroom, Cowell Health Center and Kids on Campus, but are only recommended elsewhere.
Now that many college campuses and localities, including Santa Clara in some instances, have transitioned from the crisis phase to the endemic phase of the pandemic, policies regarding quarantine times and the number of isolation rooms have been relaxed.
This year, the COVID-19 Operations Team required entry testing for all students in the first week of the quarter. Due to low compliance, however, students were told in an all-campus email sent on Sept. 26 to complete a second round of entry testing after less than 40% of the student body completed testing the previous week. Based on the reported test results, the team reported over 140 positive COVID-19 cases on campus between Sept. 19 and Oct. 2.
When asked about the current on-campus COVID-19 regulations, associate professor of biology and public health, Dr. Katherine Saxton, emphasized the importance of wearing masks on campus and continued testing.
“Wearing a mask greatly reduces the possibility of transmission and reduces the likelihood that students who test positive will need to be isolated. We believe that classrooms should be the safest place on campus, and the most accessible. No one should feel they have to put their health at risk to attend class.”
This recent spike in cases on campus occurred soon after President Joe Biden spoke about the state of the pandemic in a 60 Minutes interview.
“We still have a problem with COVID, we’re still doing a lot of work on it,” Biden said. “But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.”
COVID-19 regulations across the country have been lifted, including in Santa Clara County, where the last remaining local health orders were lifted on Sept. 12. According to reported data in the New York Times, 88% of county residents are fully vaccinated with an average weekly rate of 235 new cases.
On campus, the COVID-19 Operations Team is still enforcing both preventive and corrective measures in order to best support the SCU community. Precautionary testing is also recommended; in the case of a positive test result, a five to ten-day isolation period is required.
Dr. Saxton explained that accessible testing procedures are important to keep the campus community safe.
“At this point, we have all dealt with an exposure or experienced symptoms; taking several tests throughout the course of the quarter is not only normal, but encouraged and expected,” Saxton said.
When asked about the current regulations, Health Ambassador Sophia Yonkers-Talz emphasized the community aspect of adhering to these guidelines. She said that the classroom mask mandate was important to take care of those who would be disproportionately affected by COVID-19.
“As a country, we have moved past the idea of taking care of each other as a community,” Yonkers-Talz said. “What is happening on campus is a smaller scale of what is happening in the US as a whole. People are starting to favor individualism over community care.”
Dr. Saxton encouraged students to continue adhering to the guidelines, stating that, “Infectious diseases don’t care about our individual choices or our individual risk tolerance. Viruses spread at the community level, and what we each choose to do impacts the risk experienced by those around us.”