THE DROP
peak inside the
An inside look at how OU has handled the pandemic. BY MAYA MEADE | ILLUSTRATION BY ABIGAIL SUMMERS
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ince the start of the pandemic, over 500,000 people have died from contracting the coronavirus. According to the New York Times, the small community of Athens County has had 4,631 cases and 33 deaths. The Athens community faces additional challenges when dealing with the pandemic due to being the home of a college campus. Ohio University has implemented a combination of remote and hybrid learning since the spring of 2020, and there have been many adjustments and adaptations to the way students are learning and participating in campus life. With the coronavirus vaccine rolling out and the summer months approaching, OU announced plans for in-person events, summer orientation and classes for the fall semester in 2021. Dr. Gillian Ice, the special assistant to the president for public health operations, says that OU started using Vault, an online health resource that assists men with low testosterone, for their coronavirus tests this spring semester. Last summer, OU considered using Vault for the fall semester, but it was more expensive than other options, so they partnered with CVS once the tests became available to them later. “The logistics of managing the CVS approach to get to the point where we could test everybody just wasn’t as feasible for us as the Vault tests, because the
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backdrop | Spring 2021
