University of Texas, San Antonio recently issued the following announcement.
Editor’s note: The following message was sent via email today from President Taylor Eighmy, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Kimberly Andrews Espy, and Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President for Business Affairs Veronica Salazar to all faculty, staff and students:
As we continue monitoring local COVID-19 trends, we are eagerly anticipating the return to in-person learning and our many spring semester traditions and experiences. Based on current projections, we will return to regular campus operations on Monday, February 7 as planned. On that day, classes will commence meeting in the teaching modalities originally planned for this semester.
READINESS TO RETURN
We remain committed to putting the health and safety of our entire campus community first. Over the last several weeks we have closely monitored local, statewide and national COVID-19 surge trends, and received regular updates from our wide array of expert public health advisors. We know that our community is still impacted by the Omicron variant—especially our health care systems and K-12 schools—and that care is still needed to vaccinate, mask, test and stay home when you are sick.
New daily COVID-19 cases have begun declining nationally and in many states where the Omicron surge first began. In Texas, new daily case counts look to be declining. Current modeling for Texas suggest the surge is already declining (IHME) or will be declining in the next week (CDC, Covid-19 Scenario Modeling Hub). Although several factors can change these models’ outputs, they remain solid forecasting tools for our planning purposes to return to campus safely.
In addition to modeling forecasts, we will continue to follow our situation locally, working closely with San Antonio Metro Health and their tracking of stress level and trends. We are also monitoring hospitalization rates, vaccination status of our Roadrunner population, vaccination trends locally and in Texas, as well as our own campus impact trends around positive tests and faculty/staff health and availability. We are especially appreciative of the discussions and input from our Public Health Task Force, as well as the Faculty Senate, Chairs’ Council, Staff Senate and Student Government Association through University Leadership Council. As conditions continue to evolve, we will base any future operational modification decisions on these data, in consultation with UT System and our campus colleagues.
Original source can be found here.
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