Vaccination rates increase as Ohio U vaccination requirement nears

As the deadline for Ohio University’s vaccine requirement approaches in less than a month, Gillian Ice, the special assistant to the president for Public Health Operations, expressed optimism over increasing vaccination rates and a decrease in cases at a COVID Operations media briefing Oct. 13.

“We’re doing much better with cases right now than we have before, and we’re actually very close to being completely caught up with all cases. We’re still treating our processes like we’re still in a surge because of the backlog of some of the cases and so forth,” Ice said. “But encouragingly, our positivity rate has gone way down, overall.” 

Ohio U President Hugh Sherman announced the vaccine requirement Aug. 31 in a statement emailed to the student body, stating the university needed to do everything it could to protect the community. 

“Our commitment is to provide our students with the most normal college experience possible, but the reality is that as a nation, we are not as far as we hoped we would be in battling the pandemic. Public health experts are tracking an increase in cases in Ohio and on our campuses due to the extremely contagious Delta variant, and we need to do everything we can to continue to show our care and respect for one another and do our part to help keep the entire community safe and healthy,” Sherman said in the statement. 

As of Sept. 28, the Athens campus has a 73.9% vaccination rate; all of Ohio University has a 67% vaccination rate. 

Ice attributed the slow rise in vaccination rates to people who took a long time to upload their vaccination status to the COVID-19 Testing Pathway Program. 

“Our vaccination rates are creeping up slowly,” Ice said. “We are almost 80% on the Athens campus, just a little over 70% on the entire, across all campuses. I would say that some of this is we have a steady stream of people who are newly getting vaccinated, but we also have done a big testing compliance sweep, and that got a lot of people who have been vaccinated for some time to actually upload their information, somehow they missed the memos but they are now getting compliance with that.” 

But the Athens campus rate has improved since the media briefing. Carly Leatherwood, executive director of communication services, told The New Political on Tuesday afternoon that as of Oct. 19, the on-campus vaccination rate is 83.5%, the off-campus rate is 78.5% and the overall Athens campus vaccination rate is up to 81.27%. 

Ice said both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases have leveled off recently in Athens, though hospitals are still overwhelmed. 

“At the peak, we had a positivity rate of about 25%. And now it’s under 8 (percent) so that’s great news for symptomatics,” Ice said. “OhioHealth as a system is still reporting relatively high positivity rates and hospitals are still largely overwhelmed.” 

Ice said at the media briefing only three residential buildings were currently in orange status. But as of Oct. 18, all dorms were at yellow status with a seven-day positivity rate of 0.0% of total residents according to the Ohio U COVID-19 Dashboard. 

“It’s still a low percentage of people that have been impacted so that’s been great,” Ice said. “We’ve been really successful all semester at maintaining low levels of disease and as of yesterday, we had no one in our isolation or quarantine dorms yesterday morning. I haven’t seen the numbers today, but we’re looking good.” 

According to the COVID-19 Dashboard, only two isolation spaces are currently being used for on-campus students as of Oct. 18, and neither of them are symptomatic. 

Ice also said the positivity rate is still “a little higher” than she’d like to see among employees, but those are “relatively small numbers of people who are infected.”

Ice claimed that so far there have been around 500 exemption requests for the mandate. 

“From my point of view, I’m encouraged, because we’ve had 500-some requests, and, while I want everyone to be vaccinated, it’s not the majority of folks right now. It’s a small number,” Ice said. 

Ice said COVID Operations does not handle the exemption process due to “the potential of conflict of interest and so forth.” Medical exemptions are reviewed by a committee led by Kenneth Johnson, the chief medical officer. The committee has a number of health providers from the university. 

The committee that reviews religious and reasons of conscience exemption requests are made up by Ohio U Equity and Civil Rights Compliance, representatives from student affairs and faculty, according to Ice. 

Ice said not all medical exemptions have been accepted, adding that some did not meet the criteria, and the committee needed more information for some other exemption requests.

“From the data that’s been shared, I believe there have been some medical exemptions that have been approved, some have been denied,” Ice said. 

She said most of the exemption requests for religious reasons have been approved. 

“The religions and the reasons of conscience, I believe most of them have been approved,” Ice said. “The bar is that you have to demonstrate that you have a sincerely held belief.” 

While Ice believes the vaccination requirement may not be the sole reason for the decline in total cases, she thinks it has played a part in more people getting vaccinated. 

“I think the vaccine requirement has led to more people getting vaccinated. One of the things that I found really interesting, when we were really in the thick of cases, I helped with some of the case investigation interviews. And as part of the state case investigation requirement, you have to ask if people are vaccinated and if they’re not, why,” Ice said. 

Ice mentioned having conversations with students and discussing how a surprising amount of them just didn’t get around to getting vaccinated, didn’t think it was that big a deal and are now getting it now that the university is requiring it. 

“So, I think we’ve probably pushed a lot of people who were just ambivalent about the whole thing, no strong opinion one way or the other,” Ice said.  

The university’s deadline to be vaccinated is Nov. 15. The university recommended a first shot of Moderna by Oct. 15 and a first shot of Pfizer by Oct. 22. It is recommended that all students get their second shots, or their first shot of Johnson & Johnson, by Nov. 12 to allow time to provide proof of vaccination.