COVID-19 Update: J&J vaccine & reduced restrictions

Email highlights

• At today’s vaccine event, we will offer the Pfizer vaccine instead of the previously planned J&J vaccine.
• On-campus cases are down, allowing for some reduced restrictions on testing before events and missed required tests.

Dear DU community members,

In light of today’s announcement by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) regarding temporarily halting administration of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen (J&J) vaccine, at today’s vaccine event we will now be administering the Pfizer vaccine. Today’s event would have been the first time we offered the J&J vaccine on campus, and we do not have any other J&J events scheduled at this time.

On-campus cases are down
Thank you for your excellent compliance with our COVID-19 requirements this past week. Together, we have quickly reduced our overall positivity rate while maintaining high testing volume. This, combined with fast and effective isolation and quarantine, have brought our overall campus positivity and case counts back down after a temporary spike following spring break. This is especially notable as the majority of cases on campus are variants.

The dashboard provides a seven- and 14-day average and will continue to show elevations for a few days; however, we are confident that the peak following spring break has resolved, with only eight positives of 1,716 saliva samples collected Sunday and Monday (.04%). None of this would be possible without your cooperation. Thank you!

Reduced Restrictions
While we must all remain vigilant as we work to get our community vaccinated, we are able to reduce some of the recent restrictions. Effective immediately:

• Most events will not require prior testing of all attendees.
• Brief grace periods for missed tests are reinstated.

If you are part of a program or group under additional monitoring, please follow the individual testing guidelines you have been personally given.

Please continue to follow all protocols on campus and continue testing. We also recommend that you be especially mindful of precautions (masking, social distancing, hand hygiene) when off campus as Colorado is seeing the beginning of a fourth wave of positive cases.

Working together we can avoid another spike this term and enjoy our safe, in-person experiences on campus.

Sincerely,

Sarah Watamura
COVID-19 Coordinator