General

Governor Lamont recently announced the plan for further rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. Unlike previous plans for essential workers and those with pre-existing medical conditions, the new plan will be based solely on an individual’s age (with the exception of educators in pre-K through 12). On March 1, individuals 55 and older are eligible to begin scheduling appointments.

The governor’s medical team put considerable thought into this approach, and I believe it makes a lot of sense.

The age-based rollout has been successful in some European countries. The CDC rollout, in contrast, has been fraught with uncertainty over who qualifies as an essential worker and who is at high risk.

Dear friends,

I trust this note finds you well and safe. Connecticut is in phase 1b of the vaccine rollout, in which those 55 and older will be eligible to register to receive the vaccine beginning on March 1. The state has altered its rollout strategy and will continue to use aged-based eligibility, which is designed to simplify the scheduling and administration of COVID-19 vaccines for both recipients and providers alike.

Employees who fall into this category (55 and older) can find information about scheduling an appointment for their vaccine on the state’s website.

To the Wesleyan Community:

We are past the halfway mark for our post-arrival self-quarantine, and we can report that our numbers are very promising. The combination of pre-arrival testing and twice weekly testing on campus, arrival quarantine, and the spot use of rapid antigen tests is working. The most important factor is compliance by Wesleyan students. You have risen to the occasion. Thank you!

In light of these reassuring numbers, we have been able to relax some quarantine restrictions a bit for the second week. For more information, please review the latest updates on the Keep Wes Safe web pages.

To the Wesleyan Community,

Welcome to the new semester! Whether you have returned to campus, are studying virtually from home, or have decided to take a gap semester/year, I wish everyone good health and safety.

Thus far, our return to campus has been a great success. We have seen terrific compliance from our students with pre-arrival testing and quarantine and influenza vaccination. In our first few days of testing, the positivity rate is very low relative to our predictions. Please pat yourselves on the back for a job well done! Wesleyan’s alert level is currently at Yellow, and all students remain in a state-mandated arrival quarantine through the end of the day on February 21. The 14 days of self-quarantine (which is based on the incubation period for the coronavirus), along with our twice weekly testing, constant wearing of face covers, and grab-and-go meals, gives our campus the best chance of becoming as safe as possible.

To the Wesleyan community,

Greetings. I am looking forward to students’ return to campus in just a few short days.

Wesleyan’s staff has been hard at work in the lead-up to the new semester, and we’re confident that we are prepared to have the safest possible environment on campus this spring, as we did in the fall. Yet we also know that we are beginning our new semester in a very different public health climate. It is the coldest part of the year when most activity will be indoors (which we know to carry a higher risk of COVID-19 transmission), and the positivity rate, hospitalizations, and deaths are all at much higher levels across the country compared to the fall. Perhaps most concerning to medical experts is the rapid emergence of several new variant strains of the virus, and our lack of capacity to identify them in labs.