The University of Colorado Boulder Campus. (Photo courtesy of The University of Colorado Boulder)
COVID-19 initially impacted the daily lives of students significantly, and now, nearly two years later they are starting to get back to some sort of normalcy. Classes and activities are back on campus, football games are at full capacity, and college life is feeling much more like it should be.
COVID levels are tremendously lower than they were at this time last fall. According to the archived COVID-19 Monitoring Dashboard, in the fall semester of 2020, a total of 74,267 monitoring tests on students were completed. Additionally there were 16,067 PCR diagnostic tests in which 1,075 of them were positive.
“The fall 2021 semester has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of cases compared to fall 2020.” says Melanie Parra, Spokesperson and Assistant Director of Communications of CU Boulder Today.
This semester a total of 5,413 tests have been completed, and only 100 have had positive results. On Oct. 9, 109 PCR tests were completed and only 2 were positive.
“The major difference with this semester is the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine,” Parra added. The COVID-19 Ready Dashboard shows that 95% of the University of Colorado’s 33,585 students who completed mandatory reporting are vaccinated, where the total population is 35,897 students. 96% of the over 10,000 faculty members are vaccinated.
Because of the vaccine, the University is not providing on campus options for quarantining. Instead, it is up to students to quarantine properly and stay home from class and other activities if they are showing symptoms, were exposed to, or tested positive for COVID-19.
According to the New York Times, Colorado had about 3,000 new cases on Oct. 22, 2021, compared to Oct. 22, 2020, when only 1,394 cases were reported in the state. The most cases in a day last year was on Nov. 13, 2020, when there were about 6,500 positive cases.
Currently, the daily amount of cases in the nation is slightly higher than they were at this time last year. Compared to the state and national statistics, Boulder and the CU campus are doing considerably well in the sense of the drastically declining COVID cases.
Even though things are now in-person and everything seems a bit more normal than before, students still need to be taking precautions to stay healthy and prevent more COVID surges. Masks are still required at all public indoor places in Boulder County, including anywhere on campus and it is important to wash your hands often.
Health and Wellness services advises that you also monitor your health for COVID-19 symptoms and get COVID tests as needed in the latest COVID update. If the decline of COVID cases continues, classes will likely stay in person and capacities will continue to get back to normal.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Addison Luetke at addison.luetke@colorado.edu.
