UW hopes to finish semester without another COVID spike
The University of Wyoming hit a 0 percent prevalence rate on campus the week before Spring Break, and administrators are hoping numbers stay low through the semester.
University of Wyoming administrators are cautiously optimistic they can make it through the spring semester without another coronavirus spike.
Cases are down at the university, according to the institution’s random sample testing. But a new variant spreading through Europe and gaining a foothold in the states could reverse the university’s downward trend.
College of Health Sciences Dean David Jones told the UW Board of Trustees last week that they should continue to encourage vaccination while monitoring transmission levels in Albany County and beyond.
“Given that Wyoming tends to lag what’s going on in the rest of the country in regard to COVID, hopefully we’ll get through to finals week with no issues,” Jones said. “We probably still need to emphasize mitigation strategies if the numbers start to creep up. But at this point, we’re doing okay.”
The space reserved at every board meeting for a COVID-19 update has previously served as an arena for debate. Administrators and the trustees who agreed with them had pushed for a continuance of the mask mandate — while student, staff and faculty leaders pushed for the same. Both faced opposition from the trustees uncomfortable with the mask mandate, or who advocated for an approach more focused on “personal choice.”
At the time, UW President Ed Seidel was opposed to ending the classroom mandate – although he did recommend ending the mandate for hallways, the student union and Coe Library.
But he admitted last week that UW had so far avoided any disastrous results, even after axing the classroom mandate.
“The data show it has not hurt us on campus,” Seidel said. “But at the same time, I want to say, we have to be vigilant and very watchful of what’s going on … There was a concern that there might be a switch to online education. We haven’t seen that happen. Maybe a couple cases, but it hasn’t been a systematic change.”
The university randomly samples three percent of the campus community every week, reporting the number of cases detected and the prevalence rate — the percentage of tests that come back positive.
A high prevalence rate suggests transmission on the campus is high and might indicate that the university should be testing more of its population. A low prevalence rate suggests low transmission.
Since August, UW’s prevalence rate has mainly hovered between 1-3 percent. It reached 3.55 percent during the delta spike in October and it shot up to 12.4 percent during the omicron surge this winter, staying at 6.9 percent or higher for four weeks straight.
By contrast, the prevalence rate was 0 percent the week before Spring Break.
“So, there were no cases detected through that program,” Jones told the board last week. “That doesn’t mean there were no cases on campus, but it’s usually indicative of what’s going on. The testing prevalence this week was 1.1 percent, so again, we’re staying quite low.”
But the future is not set in stone, Jones said.
“The epidemiologists modeling this aren’t quite convinced that we’re in for another surge yet, that this may not be like anything we’ve seen with delta and omicron,” Jones said. “It is 50-60 percent more transmissible than omicron. But, like omicron, the symptoms are not as severe as they were for delta. Some are saying it may be more of a bump than a surge, but at this point, I don’t think we have enough information in the U.S. to be able to model what is actually going to happen.”
Vaccination is essential to warding off the next surge, Jones said, adding that it will only get more difficult for people who are behind to catch up on boosters, while vaccinating in general might be more expensive.
“Vaccination rates are still very important,” he said. “The more people are not getting vaccinated, the farther behind they’re falling in that course of vaccinations. The federal government has said they no longer have the funds to be able to recover the costs of vaccinations. This will now, going forward, probably be coming out of the pocketbooks of everyone.”
Albany County is currently at a low transmission level, according to the CDC. That means there’s no explicit recommendation to wear a mask, but the CDC does recommend staying up to date with vaccines and to get tested if you have symptoms.
“People may choose to mask at any time,” states the CDC’s guidance for communities with low transmission. “People with symptoms, a positive test, or exposure to someone with COVID-19 should wear a mask.”
If the local transmission level rises, those recommendations will change.
Albany County is enjoying the relative freedom that comes from low case counts and low levels of transmission. But the community lost a great deal over the past two years, including the 48 residents who have died of COVID-19 since March 2020.