April 16 - Updates on COVID-19

April showers bring May flowers. Photo by Steve Zylius

TODAY'S CAMPUS UPDATES

UCI offers help finding vaccine appointments

UCI’s Contact Tracing Center is offering assistance to students, staff and faculty on how to get vaccine appointments. For help with navigating the various websites to find available appointments, call the center at 949-824-2300.

#SleevesUpUCI progress

From mid-Tuesday to Thursday, Contract Tracing called 1,157 UCI community members to help them navigate the vaccination process. Of the 748 that answered, 60.4% had already been vaccinated with at least one dose. Keep up the momentum, Anteaters!

New campus case*

One student resident and zero on-campus employees tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. For more information, visit the UCI COVID-19 dashboard.

UC NEWS

Friday fun fact

Locally grown: 36 percent of freshman entrants and 49 percent of transfer entrants enroll at a UC campus within 50 miles of their homes.

GENERAL COVID-19 NEWS

This section curates noteworthy coronavirus news, trends and opinions. No endorsement by UCI is implied. Note: Some news sites require subscriptions to read articles. The UCI Libraries offer free subscriptions to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and OC Register for students, faculty and staff.

COVID hospitalizations rise in over half of the country

Thirty-eight states have reported an increase during the past week in the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19, according to a Washington Post analysis of data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services. The spring wave of the pandemic has driven hospitalizations above 47,000, the highest since March 4.

COVID booster shot likely needed within 12 months

People are likely to need a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine within a year of getting fully vaccinated and may subsequently need annual shots to protect against the coronavirus, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said Thursday.

Stanford begins testing Pfizer vaccine on children as young as 2

On Wednesday, Stanford Medicine began administering doses to children in the tender age group of 2 to 5 as part of a larger, three-phase trial of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine that will ultimately include children ages 6 months to 12 years.

Final county exits purple tier as reopenings continue

For the first time since California unveiled its color-coded COVID-19 reopening system nearly eight months ago, not a single county is in the most-restrictive purple tier.

Worries remain about OC working class vaccine access

Now that Orange County residents 16 and older are now eligible for the coronavirus vaccine, worries have surfaced that the move could slow getting shots to low-income communities, which are among the hardest hit during the pandemic.

HOPE, INSPIRATION, LAUGHTER

Amid the heartbreaking loss of life and economic hardship wrought by the coronavirus, we recognize the need for stories of kindness, hope, courage and humor.

Mystery tree beast or croissant?

When animal welfare officers received a desperate call about a reptile lurking in a tree in the Polish city of Krakow, they didn’t know what to expect. A relief to all, the monster turned out to be a pastry.

#UCIconnected

4th year language science major Francis Buenagua has a message for his peers: "Take it from someone who's afraid of needles, get the vaccine. It's worth it."

If you have a shoutout, or if you’d like to share what you’ve been up to during the pandemic, send photos and/or words about your COVID-19 vaccination, activities, workstation, volunteering, etc., to marketing@uci.edu or post on social media with the #UCIconnected hashtag.

EXPOSURE NOTIFICATION

* Potential workplace exposure: UCI provides this notification of a potential workplace COVID-19 exposure. Employees and subcontractors who were in these locations on the dates listed may have been exposed to the coronavirus. You may be entitled to various benefits under applicable federal and state laws and University-specific policies and agreements. The full notification is available on the UCI Forward site. If you have been identified as a close contact to a COVID-19 case, the UCI Contact Tracing Program will contact you and provide additional direction.