Campus Update – Matrix Scoring, Community Expectations

Pirates working together are making a difference. The campus remains at an elevated risk, but we continue to reduce that risk through increasing our community vaccination rate, maintaining good compliance with the indoor mask requirement and increasing testing.

Through our risk assessment process, the COVID Coordination Committee determined that the campus community risk level is still ELEVATED and we need to continue on with no change in Community Expectations. It is critical that we continue these control measures until we are more confident the current short-term movement is a continuing trend. The committee is watching for a potential increase in cases this week from the large gatherings surrounding our first home football game. In addition, the testing vendor is adding to our testing capacity starting this week. The Committee feels the additional data will provide greater confidence.

While the campus remains at an elevated risk level, our campus case rates, positivity rate and quarantine/isolation space availability continue to improve. Currently, 95% of our quarantine/isolation is available if needed. We remain concerned about local hospital capacity and on campus case rates and transmissibility. Fortunately, our local community risk level remains MODERATE with case rates and hospitalizations beginning to decline in Pitt County and across the state. At 4%, our campus positivity rate is well below the county and state rates of around 10%.

Campus surveillance testing has increased from 300-500 tests per day in the first week of the semester to more than 900 per day last week. Student Health Services recently hired a testing vendor. The vendor spent last week coordinating efforts with Student Health Services and preparing the old Kinko’s/FedEx Building on 10^th Street as a testing site. The vendor began testing students this week. The combined efforts of Student Health Services and the vendor will help us meet our objective of testing all unvaccinated students on a weekly basis. Employee testing will start next week with an initial goal of testing each unvaccinated employee every four weeks with the expectation of increasing frequency when capacity becomes available.

Please continue to wear masks indoors. If you are not vaccinated, please consider getting vaccinated to protect yourself, your family and our Pirate community. Vaccines are safe, free, effective and readily available on campus. If you choose not to get vaccinated, please do your part to keep yourself and others safe by showing up promptly for testing when contacted. Identifying positive cases is vital to limiting virus spread.

It was encouraging to see the increase in vaccinations this past week and the commitment of those students to their own safety and that of our community. Both the on-campus student and residence hall student vaccination rates increased by 4% last week. The on-campus student vaccination rate is now 59%, the residence hall rate is 68% and 77% of our employees reported being vaccinated. The Pitt County vaccination rate is 48%.

Great work, Pirates! Our Pirate football team had a big win at Marshall this week by finishing strong in the fourth quarter and we need that same spirit against this strong opponent – COVID. This is not the time to let up. Pirates finish strong.

GO PIRATES!

– Bill Koch, Associate Vice Chancellor, Co-Chair, COVID Coordination Committee, Campus Safety & Auxiliary Services