Covid 19 TF Update

Dear Colleagues,The COVID-19 Task Force met this week on April 21st. Here are the notes from the meeting:

Minnesota Department of Health Updates

  • Community level: Minnesota remains low
  • Federal judge voided CDC’s mask mandate for public transit, which was to last through May 3; CDC continues to recommend masking on mass transit
  • Shared studies on increased cardiovascular risk for up to a year after having COVID
  • COVID-19 treatments now widely available for people at high risk of severe disease, but requires advanced planning because it needs to be taken early after testing positive

Dashboard Updates

  • Community transmission level remains low, but growth rate is increasing
  • Wastewater surveillance also showing uptick in the prevalence of the virus in the metro area
  • At Friday’s growth rate (7-day avg vs prior week), would expect cases in Hennepin County reach moderate community level by end of April
  • On campus, cases among students remain very low

Testing and vaccine on campus

  • Final vaccine event yesterday
  • Final on-campus testing event today
  • There are a few leftover vault tests (can be used until Dec. 31)- Going to be available in the library for pick up by tomorrow, April 22nd

Student Vaccine Policy Status

  • The benefit of continuing the vaccine policy for students (i.e., upload vaccination info or submit vaccination exemption form) is a higher percentage of vaccinated students over time
  • Collecting the data:
    • Will need to continue to have students upload their vaccination information because we need info such as dates, boosters 
    • Current vaccination policy relies on K-12 records of in-state students, which does not include SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations 
    • Hoping to make is as convenient for new students as possible by starting to communicate this summer, giving them more lead time to upload their info 
  • It was stated in the meeting that it is currently not recommended to continue to use account holds for students out of compliance with the policy; will rely primarily on reminders

Future meetings

  • Consider shifting to every other week to align with the MDH briefing schedule
  • In the meeting today, we agreed to continue to have the meeting time blocked on our calendars each week at this time in case something changes with the case rate in the next few weeks.

We set up a Google Form so Augsburg Staff Union members could state their questions or concerns to be addressed at the meeting. We did not receive any questions this week.

Please note, urgent questions related to COVID-19 should not be submitted via the Google Form, those questions should continue to be sent to helpline@augsburg.edu, calling 612-474-3100, and/or by using the Augsburg self-reporting form.

The staff union representative will continue to send weekly updates based on information gathered in the COVID Task Force meetings and questions asked in the google form.