Practices for Personal & Community Health
Start Each Day with a Health Check
All members of the UVM community must conduct a daily health check by taking their temperature and assessing symptoms prior to arriving on campus or to entering a classroom, a dining hall, or before participating in any activity on campus. This daily health check is aided by an app being utilized in conjunction with COVID-19 testing.
If you have a temperature higher than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, or have any of the following symptoms that cannot be attributed to another cause, do not come to campus or circulate on campus. Students living in residence halls, please stay in your room and call Student Health Services at 802/656-3350. Off-campus students, stay at home and call Student Health Services. Staff and faculty, please stay at home, report your symptoms on the symptom tracker, and call your primary care physician. The symptoms are:
- Fever above 100.4F, or chills
- Cough
- Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
- Fatigue
- Muscle or body aches
- Headache
- New loss of taste or smell
- Sore throat
- Congestion or runny nose
- Nausea or vomiting
- Diarrhea
Practice Physical Distancing
While we may want nothing more now than to gather in camaraderie with our friends and colleagues, it’s very important at this time to stay at least 6 feet apart from other people, and not to gather in groups. People can harbor and spread this coronavirus before they know they are sick. That’s why it’s so important to stay a minimum of 6 feet from other people, even if you have no symptoms.
Signs throughout campus help to remind and reinforce this practice, which is essential for preventing the spread of COVID-19. Please pay attention to signs, partitions and stanchions, and other physical or visual directives that are employed to maintain physical distancing on campus. Keeping space between you and others is one of the best strategies we have to avoid being exposed to COVID-19, and to limiting its spread.
Wear a Face Covering
All UVM community members received a “Return to In-Person” health and safety kit containing COVID-19 supplies, including facial coverings. All employees and students are to wear face coverings when outside their private workspaces or residence hall rooms, and even in these private areas when in the presence of others. Visitors to campus are also required to wear facial coverings.
Wash Your Hands—A lot
Wash your hands often with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds. Use alcohol-based hand sanitizer—at least 60% alcohol strength—if soap and water are not available. Wash your hands after touching your face covering or face, when entering common spaces, and while using any shared spaces or tools. Students, faculty, and staff have easy and frequent access to soap and water or hand sanitizer.
Clean Your Workstation
Each morning and throughout the day, wipe down commonly used surfaces in personal and shared spaces: keypads, phones, printers, coffee makers, handles, etc. Custodial has increased the frequency of routine disinfection of high-touch surfaces.
Keep a Contact Journal
All students and employees are encouraged to keep a journal of people with whom they have had close contact each day. This will make it easier to contact trace in the event that precautions need to be taken to prevent the further spread of COVID-19.
Additional Employee Guidance Documents
A full list of health and safety guidance documents can be found at UVM Risk Management and Safety/UVM Operations Plan - see the list of documents in the right-hand navigation.
COVID-19 Testing, Treatment & Response
Health screenings, testing and contact tracing for students and employees will be ongoing through this year.
UVM has partnered with the Broad Institute, one of the most sophisticated and highly regarded facilities of its type in the world, to provide routine COVID-19 testing. The institute’s Clinical Research Sequency Platform SARS-CoV-2 Real-time Reverse Transcriptase (RT)-PCR Diagnostic Assay is a real-time RT-PCR test intended for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from the SARS-CoV-2 in nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs. The sample collection process is an observed self-administered anterior nasal swab. Samples are packaged daily and shipped overnight to the Broad Institute for analysis, and results are typically returned to the individual within 24 hours.
Results from COVID-19 testing on campus are helping us to closely monitor our community's public health. There are quarantine and isolation spaces for up to 230 students. We are continuing to develop health and safety risk metrics, and associated response strategies, that can be implemented as the situation changes.