Important COVID-19 updates for fall semester 2022

Mark Parisi, director of counseling and health services, sent the following update to students and employees today (July 1, 2022):

Hello students/colleagues,

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Saint Rose has adjusted its policies based on current information. This week, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel recommended a reformulation of the COVID-19 vaccine booster to adjust for current variants. As a result, please note the following update to our requirements:

Anticipating there will be changes to the booster, we are no longer requiring employees or students to have the COVID-19 booster.

The College is maintaining its requirement for students and employees to be fully vaccinated as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Students who have completed both doses of the initial vaccine series (Pfizer or Moderna or another WHO-approved vaccine or one dose of Johnson & Johnson) will be considered to have met the College’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.

Students who were granted medical or religious vaccine exemptions remain exempt. The College is continuing its process of reviewing requests for exemptions from new students and employees.

If a newly formulated booster is available in the fall, we strongly encourage eligible students and employees to receive it, as vaccines remain a strong form of protection, particularly from serious illness in the event you contract COVID-19. All members of our campus community should strive to stay up to date with CDC-recommended vaccine schedules.

Please also note that at this time we do not plan to conduct weekly COVID-19 surveillance testing in the fall semester. Weekly surveillance testing identified very few positive cases last academic year. We will continue to make COVID-19 testing available through Health Services for anyone who is presenting symptoms or is concerned about possible infection.

Currently, Albany County is rated as low risk for transmission, as categorized by the CDC, and the College has no active positive cases. It is our hope that COVID cases remain minimal locally, and we do not anticipate masks will be required on campus in the fall. However, we will continue to monitor the CDC’s community transmission levels and adapt our policies as needed for the protection of our campus and surrounding community.

Sincerely,

Mark Parisi

Director of Counseling and Health Services