HEALTHY TOGETHER
Fall Break is this Saturday through Tuesday (Oct. 16-19), but if you are in the Rome area, there are home games this weekend for football (Sewanee) and soccer (Millsaps) as well as a cross country invitational meet. When classes resume, we will be in the 9th week of the semester, and looking forward to the remaining 5 weeks of classes.
The threat of COVID continues to decline locally and regionally. With that encouraging news in mind, we are again reviewing our COVID mitigation measures. We hope to make changes in coming weeks, but as we mentioned in the last message, our options may be constrained by Executive Orders from President Biden that apply to the college.
Based on our current understanding of the Executive Orders, here is what we anticipate when classes resume after Fall Break (on Wednesday, Oct. 20).
- Unvaccinated students and employees (excluding student-athletes) will be required to test just once a week. We will send a notice to these people regarding time and location as well as off-campus testing options. Given the changing circumstances, the college will waive the testing fees on campus moving forward.
- Unvaccinated student-athletes continue to be required to test 3 times a week to be eligible to compete according to conference and NCAA standards. The college will waive the testing fees moving forward.
- Unvaccinated students and employees who have had COVID previously, will need to continue testing once a week based on our understanding of the Executive Orders. While we recognize that these individuals may have reasonable levels of immunity based on their previous infection, current GA Department of Public Health standards and CDC guidelines call for these individuals to be vaccinated as well.
- Unvaccinated students and employees, even if they have had COVID previously, must quarantine if exposed to a positive case according to GA Department of Public Health standards.
- Anyone who tests positive for COVID, regardless of their vaccine status, must isolate according to GA Department of Health standards
In coming weeks, we will continue to monitor local COVID numbers as well as GA DPH standards and federal regulations. We look forward to a time when we can again make masks optional, recognizing that it will likely be a phased process to ensure that specific classrooms and offices remain safe for members of our community who may be at significant risk even though vaccinated.