Sharpest Scalpel Queries Dr. Delia Santana About Life on Campus, 2022-23( continued)
Jamaica, I spent 5 years in Europe as a part of this training as well as having lived in several cities across the US. I have specialized experience in leadership and health policy and both my formal and professional training has prepared me for healthcare leadership. My experience at CDU has helped me to put all of these skills in practice to benefit the University and the community.
As this is early in the University 2022-23 calendar year, what is the current status of protection strategies on campus? How have they evolved over the past two and a half years?
For access to campus, we continue with a layered approach to keep the University COVID-free. We require everyone to be fully vaccinated and boosted. Everyone must complete a daily health screening, show that they passed the screening and remain at home if ill. Once on campus, everyone must undergo a COVID-19 test and wait 15 minutes for their result before entering any of the buildings. If they get a positive result they must return home and remain on home isolation for a full 10 days. Upon returning to campus, they will receive an antigen test to clear them back to duty.
We are aware that CDC recommends a 5-day isolation; however, based on our experience over the last 2 years of the pandemic, we have seen that several people were remaining positive well after the 5-day mark. As a result, we decided to stay with the 10-day isolation period, considering our classrooms a high- risk environment. With all of these protocols in place, we still encourage masking indoors and always have masks and hand hygiene items available for all who need it. This protocol has worked so well for us, that during the time when several academic institutions reported outbreaks and were shut down, CDU was able to keep its doors open for business due to our vigilance and belief in the science of prevention.
We have had to make several changes to the protocol as the pandemic progressed. We started our first day of testing early on Saturday morning, the first day of the Fall 2020 semester. During this time, we had to wait three, sometimes four days for results. We eventually made our check-in and symptom screening electronic and worked with the lab to increased results to a 1-day turnaround. As soon as antigen testing became available, the University purchased test kits and by the end of the year, we had implemented rapid testing with results in 15 minutes. In order to prevent exposure to people who tested positive, we modified our policy so that you did not enter the building until after your 15-minute test result.
We started testing with one Certified Nurse Assistant and myself in Fall 2020. Now, 10 staff members and 2 testing sites on campus to accommodate full campus reopening. To date, we completed over 85,000 tests with a positivity rate remaining below the one percentile with no outbreaks. We have also been involved in several COVID-19 vaccination clinics both on and off campus. These activities speak to robust COVID-19 protocols, which we consider best practice to keep COVID-19 outbreaks from interrupting campus operations.
Additionally, I have had weekly meetings with our University President Dr. David Carlisle, and our Chief Operating Officer Angela Minniefield, the Provost Office, and General Counsel John Patton, to develop plan after plan on creating a COVID-19 free campus.
What do your inquiries through research and contact with professional colleagues tell you about keeping a campus such as CDU safe long-term?
I was in constant communication with our local and state public health agencies and looked to the CDC guidelines as well. During the President’ s weekly forum to the University, everyone is updated on COVID-19 trends locally, nationally, and internationally. Everyone is also informed about the campus protocols and changes in response to the pandemic. In approximately June of 2021, I received approval from the California Department of Public Health to make CDU an approved state testing site.
This approval allowed us to continue testing with thousands of free shipments of COVID-19 test kits from the state. CDU is unique in that we are located in a community of Black and Brown people who are the population most affected by the pandemic in terms of illness and death related to COVID. As a result, we felt it was better to test for early detection and monitor health. One of the practices that also really helped is our ability to send home-test-kits to anyone with COVID-19 symptoms. The CDU leadership and campus community embraced the protocols in place and this a key factor in our success.
All of the University units, especially Campus Safety, the Facilities team, and Information Technology unit worked tirelessly to support the COVID-19 protocols to include servicing the tents, modifying the physical environment and airflow. I am very grateful to those teams.
Anyone who tests positive is still asked to return home and is emailed information with guidance, and monitored by a CNO team member until cleared to return to campus.
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 14