A wintery picture of Utah State University’s Old Main, as shared on the university’s Facebook page

LOGAN – At Utah State University, the willingness of students to become vaccinated has helped keep more of them in classrooms while moving the school back to what was considered normal before the pandemic.

USU spokesperson Amanda DeRito said about 87 percent of students on the Logan campus have reported they are fully vaccinated or plan to be by spring semester.

We’ve really seen a lot more classes in person and will likely see more in the spring, too, as we do kind of return to this normal state,” DeRito explained. “We’re always, of course, looking at the future and anticipating what’s coming and we know that with Omicron (variant) that could give us some hiccups that we know that when our students are fully vaccinated and our staff and faculty are fully vaccinated, that we can do a lot more.”

She said USU’s 2021 COVID infections have been lower than in 2020.

“If you look at our dashboard today, we actually have a seven-day average of new cases of five. So that means about five a day are being diagnosed,” DeRito added. “And roughly, right now, we have about 77 active cases, somewhere around there, and as people get well, they drop off, we get a few more new cases.

It’s obviously much lower than it was last year and that’s really affirming that we’re doing all the right things and that we’re extremely thankful for the COVID vaccine to be able to be in person and keep our case counts so low.”

DeRito said the Campus Case Containment team is responsible to follow up when anyone is diagnosed with COVID to find anyone who has been exposed to those infected.

She said masks in classrooms are encouraged, but not required.



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