7% Of U Students Have Filed for a COVID-19 Vaccine Exemption During Fall Semester
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December 2, 2021
University of Utah students have increasingly become fully vaccinated against COVID-19, some due to the risk of a registration hold being placed on their student account to prevent spring registration. With the increase of vaccinated students, there are also students filing for vaccination exemptions.
Utah House Bill 233 prohibits any higher education institution from enforcing a vaccine requirement without a form of exemption for its students. This applies to U students looking to file for an exemption for medical or religious reasons.
According to the U’s COVID Central website, 82% of the students enrolled for fall semester are fully vaccinated. The rest of the student body includes 7% that are still in the process of completing their vaccinations, 7% who filed for an exemption and 4% whose status is unknown. This indicates that the majority of the students on campus are vaccinated, but there is a significant portion of our campus submitting exemptions. Specifically, out of the 34,424 enrolled in the fall 2021 semester, 2,409 have filed exemptions.
Kerry Hill, the manager of the U’s Student Health Insurance and Immunization Program was asked if there has been an increase in exemptions. “We have not had an increase [in] the number of exemptions since registration,” Hill said. When asked in particular about the average number of exemption requests received by her department, Hill said, “about 15 to 20 a day.”
With a small but steady number of vaccine exemptions, the overall student population concerns of a major outbreak on campus has seemed to decrease.
Faith Chand, a junior at the U majoring in Atmospheric Science and Geoscience, said she got vaccinated because it “just felt like it was the right choice to make.” With the statistics from the U’s COVID Central website, such as the vaccination rates of students, Chand said that she feels “very safe attending campus with those numbers. I feel like it’s still everybody’s choice, and that I shouldn’t feel like I need everybody to be vaccinated. It’s still just their choice. Yeah, if they are exempted, then they’re exempt. That’s fine.”
There are many reasons that students may choose to file for an exemption; this includes religious and medical reasoning. In order to file an exemption online, students must complete a typed statement expressing their reasons for not getting the vaccine. Getting a medical exemption is a slightly different process, because instead of providing a statement, you have to provide medical documentation that explains why you are unable to receive the vaccine.
“I feel like it varies on a person to person basis,” said Elin Berto, a sophomore at the U. “Some people just do it, because they don’t feel like it, but some people actually have legitimate reasons. So for people with actual reasons, I completely respect that but for people that are utilizing it as a way to get out are kind of annoying,” said Elin Berto, a sophomore at the U.
Colleges such as the University of Vermont have seen success with vaccine mandates. As of September 2021, 100% of their students have complied with their vaccine mandate in coordination with the return to campus for the fall semester. Even with their high rates of compliance, they are still requiring masks to be worn indoors on campus.
“I definitely feel safe enough to not wear a mask. But I do want to take precautions regardless,” said Hannah Pucheu, a sophomore at the U. In regards to the 7% of students who received an exemption she said, “I feel fine. Even though it probably affects me in some way, I feel okay because it’s such a low percentage.”
According to the Salt Lake County Health Department, from Nov. 1-23, there were 12,083 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Salt Lake County. During that period there were also 44 deaths.
This data confirms that the pandemic has not particularly slowed down, but the efforts made by students are not going unnoticed. As of Nov. 23, the U’s student body has only accounted for 3,578 COVID-19 cases out of Salt Lake County’s 100,521 total of confirmed positive cases in 2021.
John Hedberg • Dec 3, 2021 at 3:07 pm
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0730-mmwr-covid-19.html
According to Rochelle Walensky, Director of the CDC, in an official CDC statement dated July 30th:
“On July 27th, CDC updated its guidance for fully vaccinated people, recommending that everyone wear a mask in indoor public settings in areas of substantial and high transmission, regardless of vaccination status. This decision was made with the data and science available to CDC at the time, including a valuable public health partnership resulting in rapid receipt and review of unpublished data.
Today, some of those data were published in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), demonstrating that Delta infection resulted in similarly high SARS-CoV-2 viral loads in vaccinated and unvaccinated people. High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus. ”
Again, the CDC announced that with the Delta variant, both vaccinated and unvaccinated people carry “similarly high” viral loads that transmit COVID-19 to other people. In effect, vaccinated people transmit COVID-19 at “similarly high” levels to unvaccinated people, so there’s no substantial difference in transmission between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, which is why the CDC Director here recommends that vaccinated people resume wearing masks, since they’re transmitting. It also means that there is NO INCREASED RISK to vaccinated people if someone remains unvaccinated, since vaccinated people have “similarly high viral loads”. The only real risk is to those who have no antibody protection, whether from natural antibodies or from vaccines.
So, take comfort from the fact that if you have antibodies, you’re at no higher risk from the unvaccinated than you are from the vaccinated.
https://coronavirus.utah.gov/case-counts/
On the other hand, keep in mind that the vaccine protections are temporary. Under ‘Risk Factors’, the Utah Coronavirus website says that, as of December 03, there have been 50,000+ breakthrough cases of COVID-19 among the vaccinated in Utah, with incidence increasing as vaccines wear off. I caught COVID-19 on August 30th, about 5 months after getting 2 shots of Pfizer, so the durability of vaccine antibodies may be far less than previously hoped. Natural antibodies may be the best inoculation out there (Nature’s way), and the only real exit from this pandemic, much like 1919.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#SexAndAge
According to the CDC, only bout 5,248 Americans aged 0-29 have died of COVID-19, which means that out of approximately 807,000 American deaths from COVID-19, college students as a demographic only account for about 1 death in 154. That doesn’t help if your family is the one that gets hurt, but it does mean most students reading this will be relatively safe.
All the Best, with Love,
J Hedberg