College students on campus are high-risk when it comes to contracting the virus. In my opinion, that should have been factored into the vaccine availability phases.
At the top of the list for vaccine recipients are people over the age of 65 and healthcare workers. With winter break wrapping up around the peak of the pandemic, shouldn’t college students, staying in dorms on campuses, be higher up on that list?
There are four phases for vaccine recipients. College students are in the last phase, which is categorized as “all other groups.” During the fall semester, COVID-19 cases spiked on college campuses around the country. Universities, such as Cabrini, declined to provide their campus with COVID-19 testing in the fall semester. All while COVID-19 spreads through campuses. There should be a plan developed by institutions, where they can roll-out vaccinations to the students on campus that want them or refer students to close-by medical facilities to get a vaccination.
As of now, no single university has provided its students, faculty and staff with vaccines. The country is still in the rollout of phase one and entering phase 1a. By the time phase two rolls around, it will be well into the spring season. If students are being clustered into dorms on campuses, then they should be vaccinated.
In addition, many campuses will have either gone back to online school or there will be massive surges of COVID-19 cases. In my opinion, there are two ways to conduct the spring semester; online without anyone on campus, or having classes on campus, with testing and potential vaccinations.
Time after time, colleges from private to public were having outbreaks in the fall. What makes people think that will not happen during the spring semester? With the beginning stages of the vaccine rollout occurring as we speak, they are still in the first phase and it will be months until the second phase comes around. With that being said, college students should not be jumping the line, however they should be prioritized for a vaccine if they are on campus during the spring semester.
If colleges are not requiring vaccinations, then I believe that students should be able to get vaccinated at hospitals, pediatric offices or urgent care as soon as possible. In addition to students getting vaccinated, faculty and staff on campus should be higher up in the phase stages as well. College students do make up over half of the campus population, but they interact with the people who are employed by the university as well. This adds even more to the college student vaccination argument. Taking the necessary precautions to combat COVID-19, which means a vaccine rollout that not only protects students, but it protects the ones around them.
With colleges returning from winter break during a pandemic, the goal should be to control while people are waiting for vaccinations. While college students in a large part are not at as high of a risk as health care workers and ages 65 and over, they are very prone to spreading it. When a large swath of people are condensed to a small location, those are breeding grounds for the spreading of the virus. With being in a location that is prone to superspreading the Coronavirus, college students should be higher up in the phases for vaccinations.
