Elizabeth Nguyen
Contributing Writer
Dominican University responds to a changing pandemic with new COVID guidelines and offering updated booster shots to students.
Dominican’s Incident Management & Assessment Team (IMAT), an emergency response team comprised of senior staff members, announced a series of changes to the university’s COVID response earlier this month.
According to the announcement, those with vaccination exemptions no longer need to do regular surveillance testing, nor will the Wellness Center be providing it. The relaxation of mask and guest policies from last semester will remain in place. Additionally, the university has simplified the contact tracing process to focus only on confirmed cases, not possible exposures.
DU will continue to require vaccination, and the Wellness Center will continue to provide PCR and antigen testing, according to the announcement. These changes, like those that are occurring across the country, are in response to how the pandemic itself has changed, according to Liz Heintz, assistant director of health services in the Wellness Center.
“We are trying to learn how to accept and live with COVID now that it is here to stay,” she said. “We have learned much more about the infection since 2019 when we were all quarantining and very fearful of contracting the infection.”
Many public officials have made statements recently as well expressing optimism about the pandemic. President Biden earlier this week remarked that “the pandemic is over” in a 60 Minutes interview, while World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gave a more cautiously positive assessment that “the end [of the pandemic] is in sight” in an earlier press conference. The most recent COVID-19 Dashboard released by the university reflects this locally as well; although transmission in Cook County is at medium levels, transmission on campus is currently low.
Student Government Association (SGA) President Carson Harvey feels students can be optimistic given the work being done at all levels. “[COVID-19] still exists,” he said. “[But] we have been readily combating it and making it less of a threat to our daily lives.”
The new guidelines also coincide with the announcement of updated COVID-19 boosters from both Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. According to a media statement released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the new boosters “add Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 spike protein components to the current vaccine composition”, increasing their effectiveness. The CDC is recommending the new boosters “from Pfizer-BioNTech for people ages 12 years and older and from Moderna for people ages 18 years and older,” and must be administered at least two months after most recent vaccination dose.
On campus, the Wellness Center made the updated booster shots available to students at the flu vaccine event earlier this month, according to Liz Heintz, but those who missed this chance to receive the new booster shot will have another opportunity in the coming weeks.
“The plan is to have Flu and Bivalent [boosters] again available on October 5th,” says Heintz. Students can also locate new boosters offered through the CDC’s Vaccine Finder.
Compared to the push to get vaccinated back at the height of the pandemic, the rollout of this new booster is decidedly quieter, perhaps reflecting the shift in the pandemic noted earlier.
When asked whether students should make it a priority to get the new booster, Harvey’s statement similarly lacks the panic that was so characteristic of early-pandemic rhetoric and better reflects the average sentiment today. “If students feel it is necessary, the choice is truly up to them as individuals.”
enguyen@my.dom.edu
