UW trustees consider mask mandate extension
Though no action will be taken until tomorrow, the board heard recommendations from administrators and school leadership, urging the trustees to extend the university’s current mask policy.
The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees has not yet decided whether it will extend the mask policy put in place last month.
But during its meeting Thursday, the board did discuss the successes of the policy so far, and heard a unanimous recommendation to extend the policy from the university’s president and administrators, as well as faculty, staff and student leadership.
“Nobody likes wearing these things,” College of Health Sciences Dean David Jones said. “June and July were fantastic. You know, I’m vaccinated, I was able to be out not wearing it. And now we’re back to this. This should be viewed as not something that’s restrictive; it is enabling us to be together, to be in the classroom — because if things get out of hand, we’re going back to virtual.”
When the board revisits the issue again tomorrow, Jones recommended the trustees add clarity to the current policy. As it stands, there’s some confusion about which indoor environments require masks and which do not, but Jones recommended requiring masks whenever one is indoors, even if some exceptions — like when a student is actively exercising in Half Acre Gym — must still be carved out.
The trustees will consider extending, clarifying, tweaking or canceling the mask mandate at tomorrow’s meeting. The board is free to vote how it wishes, but the recommendations from staff and the university’s own COVID-19 advisory group are clear: the mask mandate is working and should be extended through the remainder of the fall semester.
“The good news is that I think we’re managing this, but we have to be vigilant,” UW President Ed Seidel said. “We are fully open, and it is our intention that we do what is necessary to stay fully open as the virus continues its path.”
Facts on the ground
Jones laid out the state of the pandemic in Wyoming, highlighting how current active cases are at a level not seen since the winter spike in late 2020. He added some long-term care and assisted living facilities are in “full outbreak mode.”
“The number of COVID deaths in the state has increased dramatically over the last month,” Jones said. “In Laramie County, there are 52 patients in the hospital with COVID, including a 6-year-old and 4-week-old. There are 14 in the ICU, 10 of them are on ventilators.”
But the pandemic is hitting even closer to home, as well.
“In Albany County, last week, there were 102 new cases, which has been pretty steady and the most since late 2020,” Jones said. “Ivinson Hospital currently has eight in-patients with COVID, plus four patients with COVID who are in the ICU — and the ICU at Ivinson is not very large.”
In fact, having four patients in Ivinson’s ICU means there is little — if any — capacity left. While the hospital technically has seven ICU beds, three of those are “critical care acuity-adaptable beds,” and the hospital will often send patients out-of-state once it hits four ICU patients.
But sending patients out-of-state is becoming less and less feasible as hospital ICUs across the Mountain West fill up with unvaccinated patients.
UW currently knows of 65 active cases among its student and employee population, according to the university’s COVID-19 dashboard.
“We are not in a crisis mode yet, and I would attribute that to the fact that we currently do have masking policy on campus,” Jones said. “My concern is if we were to remove the policy, say this month, we wouldn’t start to see the negative effects of that … for about a month. And then if we were to put the policy back in place, it would really be too late. We wouldn’t see the effects of that until after Thanksgiving.”
Jones said keeping the policy in place for the semester offers students and faculty consistency.
“I think this sends a message that we care about the health and wellbeing of our students,” he said. “And equally important, it tells our faculty and our staff that we care about their wellbeing. I think the faculty in particular feel like there isn’t any kind of collective concern from the university about their health and wellbeing in the classroom. We have some faculty who have family members, who have children at home, who are immunocompromised, and they don’t want to bring COVID into their house.”
Vax all around
In addition to the mask mandate, Seidel touted the university’s “rather good” vaccination rate, though it’s unclear exactly what that rate is. Two sources give conflicting numbers.
Self-reporting, which the university encourages and can be done online, showed that some 75 percent of benefited employees and 40 percent of students are vaccinated.
A survey taken in-person during the first days of the semester showed much higher rates — 88 percent for employees and 66 percent for students — but the survey might suffer from what researchers call response biases.
While President Seidel said he believed most people were truthful in the survey, Dean Jones said the online self-reporting might paint a more accurate picture.
“We had volunteers who were doing the survey,” Jones said. “They also happen to be people largely in positions of authority in the university and we felt that some of the students didn’t feel they could say, ‘No, I have not been vaccinated.”
While faculty, staff and student leadership were all supportive of extending the current mask policy, ASUW President Hunter Swilling — who presides over the university’s student senate — took his recommendations a step further.
Swilling said the only way UW can ever safely end its mask mandate is by achieving a much higher vaccination rate. One way to do that? A vaccine mandate.
“I know that’s unpopular, but over 1,000 colleges and universities across the United States have already done so,” Swilling said. “I really think it’s something we should consider, considering there’s already vaccine mandates for other types of diseases. In the case of the University of Wyoming, I believe just one. But the K-12 system has 12 that are required. I think it’s something we ought to talk about.”
Whatever one thinks of mandates, vaccination works. That’s especially true when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine, which is highly effective at shielding individuals from getting the disease and spreading it to others. It also nearly eliminates an individual’s chances of having a severe case, becoming hospitalized, or dying.
-