Many college students and faculty across the region from Santa Cruz to Palo Alto will return to online instruction after the holiday break and have to scramble to get booster vaccine shots after officials at several universities announced the measures in response to growing concerns about the spread of the COVID-19 omicron variant on campuses.
University of California schools on the quarter system are postponing returns to campus next month and requiring booster shots. California State University is requiring boosters at 23 campuses across the state. And other local private schools such as Stanford and Santa Clara University are either making similar temporary campus closures or implementing booster mandates.
The closures and vaccine booster mandates are the latest moves made by local leaders in response to the omicron variant, which has seen a nearly 3-fold increase in just one week, helping to fuel a recent rise in overall COVID-19 cases.
On Thursday, Stanford University became one of the first local universities to postpone in-person classes for the start of the upcoming winter quarter. The university has said it will require members of the school community to get a vaccine booster shot as similar requirements unroll across California.
In a letter to the campus community, Stanford University Provost Persis Drell and Vice Provost for Environmental Health and Safety Russell Furr said the pivot to online instruction was driven by uncertainty about the omicron variant and to “minimize disruptions to students’ coursework and also provide as much predictability as possible for both students and instructors.”
The university’s decision is no longer an outlier locally or statewide.
Several UC schools across the state announced Tuesday they’ll launch classes remotely for at least two weeks in January. UC Berkeley runs on a semester system and plans to continue in-person when classes resume in mid-January.
On Tuesday, University of California President Michael V. Drake wrote to the school chancellors granting them discretion to devise their own plans to mitigate the risks of omicron and prompting them to encourage booster shots across all campuses. UC Davis announced that it is requiring staff and students who are eligible to get a booster by Jan. 31 or provide proof of exemption. The school will operate classes remotely the first week to allow students and staff time to obtain the shot.
Other universities are using booster shot requirements over an immediate call to online learning as a way to mitigate the spread on their respective campuses.
California State University officials announced Wednesday that all faculty, staff and students accessing university facilities or programs will be required to receive a vaccine booster shot for the spring semester. The school community will have until Feb. 28 or six months following full initial vaccination to fulfill the requirement. Faculty represented by labor unions will not be subject to the booster requirement until the CSU concludes its meet-and-confer process with those unions, according to a statement from the university.
San Jose State University, San Francisco State University and other California State schools will continue to offer in-person learning for those who meet the requirement.
“Implementing the booster requirement now will help mitigate the potential spread of the variant on campuses as they repopulate in January after the winter break,” California State University Chancellor Joseph Castro wrote in a press release.
Schools such as S.F. State are hoping to keep campuses open.
“We are still planning for a semester with a mix of in-person and remote experiences which were designed based on a survey of student needs and desires for the spring semester,” Kent Bravo, a spokesman for SFSU, wrote in an email.
Santa Clara University has a similar plan.
Classes at the university will resume in person on Jan. 3 as previously scheduled, but faculty will have the flexibility to offer some courses online or in a hybrid format for the first week of the winter term, Deepa Arora, a spokeswoman for the university, wrote in an email. The university will require COVID-19 booster shots “as soon as students are eligible for them,” and all students are required to get tested twice during the first week of the winter term, Arora said.
Other schools such as Holy Names University in Oakland, where most classes are already online, are not making course adjustments. The university — like many others — has required proof of vaccination of students enrolling in on-campus or hybrid classes, said spokeswoman Sonia Caltvedt.
The delays in school openings are drawing some opposition. Gov. Gavin Newsom, various educational groups and teachers unions, one local UCSF professor of infectious disease and some students are calling for schools to return as planned.
Dr. Monica Gandhi, professor of infectious diseases at the University of California, San Francisco, said that while she thinks most people will need a booster, children and vaccinated college students are at a lower risk of catching the virus or becoming severely ill, and schools should stay open at this point in the pandemic.
“The reason we reopened was that there were so many mental health effects and worries that children were experiencing learning loss,” Gandhi said.
In a statement Wednesday, Gov. Newsom and state education leaders wrote in support of keeping schools across the state open, lauding how school communities “have worked tirelessly to keep schools both safe and in-person.”
“California schools have been open because of, not despite of, our priority on safety. As we approach the new year, we reaffirm our shared commitment to one another, to our parents and to our students: to keep each other safe and to keep our classrooms open,” the statement reads.
Source: www.mercurynews.com