email : Webview : COVID-19 Update and Revision to UC Policy on COVID-19 Vaccination Requirements

June 2, 2023

Dear Members of the Campus Community,

On May 16, 2023, the University of California Office of the President announced revisions to the University of California COVID-19 vaccine policy, to allow students, faculty, and staff using campus facilities the option of affirmatively declining the required COVID-19 vaccines without the need for approval of exceptions or exemptions. The University will still require students and employees to be up-to-date with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 Vaccination Recommendations, including current booster recommendations, but now there will be an option through the UCSB MyHealth Portal, under the “Medical Clearances” section, to annually affirmatively decline the vaccinations. Thus, “compliance” and “up to date” now means either having received a bivalent COVID-19 booster or affirmatively opting out of getting the most recent currently recommended booster.

Entering students and new employees will be required to be compliant with COVID-19 vaccinations before arrival, which includes the option of affirmatively declining. Continuing students, staff, and faculty will be required to be compliant — either by having the latest booster or by affirmatively declining it — by a deadline to be established later this year.

The COVID-19 Response team continues to encourage all faculty, staff, and student employees to self-report their COVID-19 infections, in order to comply with CalOSHA and State regulations requiring notification of exposed close contact co-workers. Along with individual confidential notifications through the UCSB MyHealth Portal, we will post the campus locations of the positive cases on the COVID-19 dashboard web pages, to enable more widespread notifications. The dashboard will no longer track overall COVID-19 case numbers, since the widespread use of home testing has made these numbers unreliable.

At-home COVID-19 rapid antigen tests continue to be available on campus for faculty, students, and staff without charge, and we encourage you to use these for early detection and isolation when feeling ill.

If you have any questions about this or other COVID-19 matters, please email the COVID-19 Response Team at ucsb-covid19@ucsb.edu. For more information, please visit UC Santa Barbara’s COVID-19 information pages.

Thank you for continuing to prioritize the health and welfare of our campus community.

Sincerely,

Stuart Feinstein, Ph.D.
COVID-19 Response Team Coordinator and Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology

Vejas Skripkus, M.D.
Executive Director of Student Health and Campus Physician

Mary Ferris, M.D.
Campus COVID-19 Clinical Advisor

UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA | 93106 United States

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