Important Vaccination Survey - Please Complete By Friday
Dear Students,
As you know, those of you in Connecticut are now eligible to be vaccinated. I know that many of you have already made appointments and some of you have already started to be vaccinated in Connecticut. We continue to work with the state, Hartford HealthCare and other partners to develop plans for clinics to expedite the vaccination process for you before you leave campus. While the College is advocating for access to the vaccines, the limiting factor is the supply of vaccines and we are trying to adjust our plans to respond to changes in that supply.
The state’s original plan was to provide college students in Connecticut with the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine in early May. Because it is a one-shot vaccine, it is easier to vaccinate students with the limited amount of time left in early May. As you may have heard in the news, there was a problem in a Baltimore vaccine plant that led J&J to discard nearly 15 million doses. As a result, there are fewer J&J vaccine doses being allocated across the country, so we now have to figure out a plan that uses a combination of J&J and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The Pfizer vaccine requires two shots with three weeks in between each dose, so if we are able to start in April, we can schedule both shots while you are at Conn. The Moderna vaccine also requires two shots but with four weeks between doses; therefore, this vaccine is not an option given the limited amount of time we have left in the term.
With this background in mind, I need your help. I would like all students who are in our campus testing program to fill out this new vaccination SURVEY by the end of the day on Friday. The survey should be completed by students living on campus, living within New London County and commuting to the College. This is a very short survey that changes depending on how you answer the questions. The information from the survey will help us in trying to offer vaccinations before the end of the semester. It is important that everyone in the groups noted above complete the survey, even if you have already been vaccinated, so that we have accurate counts for planning purposes.
Thank you for taking the time to review this information and complete the survey. We are working hard to try to make vaccines easily accessible to you.
Sincerely,
Victor Arcelus
Dean of Students