January 28, 2022 – COVID Update

Dear Whitman community,

Today is the last day of our campus-wide baseline testing, and while we will not have the comprehensive data until early next week, the results we have so far indicate that, at Whitman, things are going reasonably well. Our community positivity rate, which is a main data point in our considerations of campus activities, has stayed level at 1.41% each of the past two weeks. While we had about 30 new cases last week, this week we’ve seen 22 cases so far, although we acknowledge there will be more before the end of the week. More importantly, our contact tracing has not identified any signs of widespread transmission on campus.

Our relatively favorable campus situation is in contrast to the Walla Walla Valley, which has a community positivity rate at least twice as high as Whitman’s, spurred by a lower vaccination rate and less compliance with the state masking requirement. Epidemiologists expect it to be a few more weeks still before omicron peaks in the county, which remains in a state of high community transmission according to the CDC. This reinforces the fact that our masking requirement, the very high percentage of our campus community that is up to date on their vaccines and our other COVID-19 protocols are making a difference in keeping our students, staff and faculty healthy.

Consequently, the Cabinet and elected faculty leadership, with the support of our consulting epidemiologist, have decided to lift some of the restrictions that were temporarily in place at the start of the semester:

In-person dining for students will resume with dinner tonight at Cleveland Commons, with Jewett Cafe and Reid Market opening for their regularly scheduled hours. Mobile ordering and grab-and-go options will remain available for students who wish to get their food and eat in a private setting. We ask that faculty and staff do not yet begin in-person dining, though can they use the mobile app for grab-and-go orders outside of the lunch rush (11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.)
Whitman students may begin volunteering in off-campus locations if the volunteer activity takes place outdoors or if all people the volunteer interacts with during the volunteer activity are masked.
The five person gathering limit will be lifted for department and committee meetings and registered student club and organization programming as long as all attendees are properly masked. We do ask that these meetings refrain from including food or beverages for the time being so that all attendees may remain masked throughout the gathering.
Social gatherings both on-campus and off-campus must remain limited to five people, all masked, in order to minimize the risk of transmission in the household or informal types of situations where the virus is most likely to spread.

The N95/KN95/KF94 masking requirement will remain in place at this time as part of our Spring 2022 COVID-19 Protocols.

We have decided not to implement surveillance testing at this time, though we will continue to watch for signs that indicate we need to adjust our testing strategy. While baseline testing was critical to establish a big picture of our community’s starting case rates, symptomatic and close contact testing is the most efficient way to identify new cases and look for community spread. As a reminder, anyone with symptoms should immediately self-isolate and be tested 24 hours after symptoms develop. Whitman continues to offer symptomatic and close contact testing for students (at the back door of Welty Health Center from 9 to 11:30 a.m. and 2 to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday) and employees (contact hr@whitman.edu to schedule an appointment). We also now have an option for Security to deliver at-home testing kits to students who have COVID-19 symptoms on the weekend.

Going forward, we have a new Threshold Action Level document to help the Cabinet and elected faculty leadership consider the appropriate campus activities and mitigation measures needed based on our campus COVID-19 levels. This document is linked in our COVID-19 Dashboard for quick reference. Currently our data puts us in Action Level 2: Medium, though it is important to note that we may choose to implement activity modifications from higher or lower levels to address specific situations as needed.

Going into February, we are encouraged about our ability to safely continue holding in-person classes and activities. Your cooperation with all our testing and masking and vaccination requirements reinforces that our students, faculty and staff are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to support a safe and healthy learning and working environment for our entire campus community. We remain grateful for the resilience, positivity and consideration for each other’s well-being that you all continue to demonstrate.

Best,
Peter

Peter Harvey
Chair, Coronavirus Task Force