Uh Oh Omicron! Are We Going Back to the Future? - Part 2

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Earlier today, we noted the shutdown of Cornell due to an Omicron outbreak. Similar developments seem to be occurring elsewhere:

New York University is the latest college to cancel events over a coronavirus surge.

By Sharon Otterman, Dec. 15, 2021, NY Times

New York University announced Wednesday that it was immediately canceling all “nonessential” gatherings and events both on and off campus, including graduations, holiday parties, study groups and athletic competitions, because of surging rates of new coronavirus cases in the community.

“It’s not a cause for alarm, but it is a cause for concern, caution, and appropriate actions,” the university’s provost, Katherine Fleming, said in a memo to the entire university.

New York University is the latest college in the Northeast or Midwest to cancel in-person gatherings as cases of the coronavirus suddenly climb. The increases are tempering optimism that American colleges can safely continue on their planned trajectories back to normal after the dispiriting remote experiences of last year.

New York University is also among a growing number of colleges that will mandate booster shots to return to campus for the spring semester, in an effort to better control the Omicron variant, which scientists believe is causing vaccine breakthrough infections and is already present on some college campuses.

Cornell University, which reported 930 positive cases this week alone, including some with the Omicron variant, has put its main campus in Ithaca, N.Y., on its highest alert level, Code Red. Cornell moved final exams online and canceled all in-person events as of Tuesday.

Princeton University in New Jersey has also moved finals online, to enable students to leave for home as soon as possible. Among Princeton’s rising cases are “suspected cases of the highly contagious Omicron variant,” Jill Dolan, the dean of Princeton College, the university’s undergraduate school, wrote in an email to students on Tuesday, explaining the sudden shift.

The surges are happening at universities with very high vaccination rates. At New York University, 99 percent of students and faculty are vaccinated. So is 97 percent of the oncampus population at Cornell.

Last week, Middlebury College in Vermont moved to remote instruction for the rest of the semester. DePaul University in Chicago and Southern New Hampshire University each said this month that they would switch to all remote instruction, at least for a time, when classes resume in January...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/nyregion/nyu-events-canceledcovid.html.

Meanwhile, UC's VP for Health, Dr. Carrie Byington, told the Regents today that her "optimistic" scenario was that everyone gets Omicron:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQzfK6Q_ElA.

Watch the Regents' Health Services Committee Meeting of Dec. 15, 2021

Thursday, December 16, 2021

As blog readers will know, the Regents' Health Services Committee met yesterday via Zoom. In fact, yesterday, we posted a brief excerpt from the presentation by UC Health VP Carrie Byington on the Omicron/COVID-19 situation. We repost that excerpt below in case you missed it - along with the recording of the entire meeting. (The full Byington presentation begins around minute 13.10.)

The meeting began with public comments dealing with labor issues at Children's Hospital-Oakland and about in-home care outsourcing. Both UC prez Drake and VP Byington dealt with the current uncertainty surround the Omicron variant. As we noted, Byington indicated that it might well be the case that despite vaccines, everyone will eventually get Omicron due to it contagiousness. There was also concern that the use of testing for the coronavirus meant that medical staff were quarantining, thus adding to labor shortage problems.

The topic then turned to medical education in California and a program aimed at increasing diversity of physicians. There was also discussion of the opiod problem and a suggestion that early reporting of developing problems of that type would be useful.

We preserve recording of Regents meetings indefinitely since the Regents "archive" them for only one year - for reasons unknown.

You can find a link to the entire meeting at:

https://archive.org/details/regents-health-services-committee-12-15-21.

As noted above, we again post the Byington every-one-may-get-it-despite-vaccination excerpt below:

Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQzfK6Q_ElA.