Hood requires booster vaccinations on campus

By Rachel Shaw

The Wellness Department is urging students who haven’t yet gotten their booster to do so as soon as they are eligible.

In the upcoming weeks, the Wellness Department will be sending out a new way to track vaccination and booster information. Members of the Hood community will be required to fill out their email, vaccination dates, booster information, and upload a picture of their vaccination card.

Hood College has required all eligible students, staff, and faculty to get the booster within the first month of returning to campus for the spring semester.

Since the start of the semester, Hood has hosted multiple COVID-19 vaccine booster clinics for students, staff, and faculty that couldn’t get boosted or vaccinated before spring semester.

“The booster is the best way to prevent the community from getting COVID and having disruptions to class time,” Amanda Dymek, director of wellness, said.

As of Feb. 7, Frederick County has a positivity rate of 12.63% with 79.7% of the population over the age of five being vaccinated, according to the CDC.

“Fortunately, the omicron variant, while it’s very contagious, is typically not as serious in terms of the illness for the individuals who have had it,” Dymek said. “The severity of illness is much lower, and we are vaccinated and boosted. So, with those, on top of the masks, mean there’s even less likely of a chance that somebody could have or get COVID. Because of those we felt it was safe and appropriate to return to campus.”

Hood College offers the COVID dashboard, which is updated on a weekly basis, to provide the community with data of the school’s vaccination status, positivity rates, and data for Frederick County. According to the dashboard, there have been a total of 10 positive cases on campus since Jan. 24.

“From our campus data we have next to no covid cases and so we know that here on campus, because we have a highly vaccinated community, we have conscious citizens that are taking care of themselves, getting tested when they are asked to, we’re in a really good place to finish the semester in person and stay mostly healthy,” Dymek said. “I’m cautiously confident that we won’t have to go back to a remote learning environment.”