August 30, 2021 – COVID Update

Dear Whitman community,

Welcome back to all our students, staff and faculty! There is a lot of energy and excitement as we look forward to the first day of classes tomorrow. I also know many of you are wondering about the results of our baseline testing and perhaps a bit anxious about the COVID situation on campus.

Today was the final day of Round 1 baseline COVID-19 testing for all members of our campus community. While we don’t have the results of today’s tests yet, we do know that last week we had 1,686 negative tests and 9 positive tests, 7 in students and 2 in employees. That puts our positivity rate at 0.5% which is below what our epidemiologist predicted for our first round of testing for the semester. Most of these community members are asymptomatic and are feeling fine.

In addition to the baseline testing, since move-in day Wednesday, we had 3 students and one staff member who experienced symptoms and subsequently tested positive. All of the individuals who tested positive are currently in isolation, either in our on-campus isolation housing or at their off-campus homes. Our COVID-19 Dashboard will be updated with the full results of Round 1 baseline testing and symptomatic testing as soon as that data is available.

One of the reasons we choose to use PCR tests on campus is because they are some of the most sensitive in detecting COVID-19. However, that sensitivity also causes some complications. One of the challenges we are seeing is that since our positive cases are mostly asymptomatic, we don’t know if they are the result of a previous, unknown COVID-19 infection or if the person is actively shedding the virus and is currently contagious. We have seen at least one positive case test negative in a follow-up COVID-19 test.

Therefore, in the spirit of wanting as many of our fully vaccinated students as possible to participate in classes and other campus activities, and after consulting with our epidemiologist, we have come up with a follow-up testing protocol for students who tested positive in round 1 of our baseline testing but are asymptomatic and are not considered close contacts of other positive cases:

If a student tests positive via a PCR test and is asymptomatic, we will follow up with a rapid antigen test.
If the rapid antigen test is also positive, the student will remain in isolation.
If the rapid antigen test is negative, that suggests that the student is not actively shedding the virus. If that is the case, we will do a third test using a cepheid PCR test.
If the cepheid PCR test is negative, we feel confident the student is not actively shedding the virus and we will release them from isolation.
If the student has a negative rapid antigen test, but a positive cepheid PCR test, we will provide them with N95 masks (one new mask for every day of isolation) and give them the option to attend their classes and other campus events. However, a positive cepheid test will require the student to stay in isolation housing. In both cases they must agree to daily rapid antigen testing for a full ten days after their original positive test. We also ask that they take advantage of grab and go dining options on campus so they are not dining unmasked around other students.

Again, this repetitive testing option is only available if the student is asymptomatic.

Round 2 of our campus-wide baseline testing begins tomorrow, and we hope that the results will show no evidence of on-campus transmission. The low number of cases we’ve seen so far are a positive sign that the steps taken by our community are positioning us to successfully navigate the pandemic in spite of the highly contagious Delta variant. We currently have 96% of our campus community fully vaccinated, while the remainder either have exemptions or will receive their second vaccine dose in the next few weeks. A walk around campus shows that people are wearing their face masks indoors as required and many outdoors as well. We especially encourage masking in crowded spaces outdoors as well. The handful of asymptomatic cases identified in vaccinated individuals reiterate the importance of following all our Fall 2021 COVID-19 Protocols and participating in our baseline testing.

If you have any questions about how we plan to learn, live and work together safely at Whitman this fall, please refer to our Fall 2021 COVID-19 Protocols and our Fall 2021 COVID-19 FAQs for more details. You can also reach out to me or to members of the Coronavirus Task Force with specific questions.

Best,
Peter

Peter Harvey
Chair, Coronavirus Task Force