April 6 - Updates on COVID-19

TODAY'S CAMPUS UPDATES

UCI’s Brilliant Future campaign surpasses $1 billion in gifts

In 2020, donors accelerated their giving, both for UCI’s COVID-19 efforts and for longstanding goals. The amount raised for student support alone increased by more than 40 percent between 2019 and 2020. Additionally, the university received 15 more gifts greater than $1 million in 2020 than in 2019. The outlook for 2021 is optimistic.

Send us your vaccine selfies!

Calling all UCI students and employees - we want to hear from you. Beginning next Thursday, April 15, Californians 16 and older are eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. In some ZIP codes, this age group is already eligible. If you are a UCI student, staff or faculty member and receive your COVID-19 vaccine, send a selfie and reasons why you got the vaccine to marketing@uci.edu and/or hashtag it with #UCIconnected, and we can share it here.

No new campus cases*

No student residents or on-campus employees tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday. For more information, visit the UCI COVID-19 dashboard.

Employee vaccinations available Friday at the Bren

All UCI employees are eligible to set up vaccination appointments for this Friday at the Bren Events Center. Check your email (or junk mail folder) for your appointment invitation.

UCI COVID-19 NEWS AND EVENTS

National Public Health Week 2021: Building Bridges to Better Health

Monday, April 5, through Sunday, April 11, is National Public Health Week. UCI’s Program in Public Health Dean Bernadette Boden-Albala shares a message to the UCI community including a list of virtual events being hosted across the country as part of this year’s National Public Health Week.

The pandemic in prison

The conditions inside California’s prisons paint a stark reality of the mental and physical health toll the pandemic is taking on incarcerated individuals, says Kristin Turney, UCI sociologist. She’s part of a group working to raise public awareness of the coronavirus crisis in the state’s prisons through a new website, www.prisonpandemic.uci.edu.

UC NEWS

UC data breach - additional information from UCOP

Yesterday, we shared information about a UC data breach from the UC Office of the President (UCOP) and steps it recommended the UC community take to protect themselves. To assist the UC community with questions on the data breach, UCOP has published FAQs in both English and Spanish to UCnet. It has also created a UCOP email account for members of the UC community to send questions: communications@ucop.edu. UCOP stresses the seriousness of this incident and the need for people to be proactive in protecting themselves, including signing up with Experian.

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.

In four OC ZIP codes, everybody 16 and older is already eligible for vaccine

People age 16 and older who live in four ZIP codes of Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove can get a COVID-19 vaccine now – an expanded age guideline that won’t apply in much of California until April 15. The four areas are in Santa Ana’s 92701 and 92703 ZIP codes, Anaheim’s 92805 and Garden Grove’s 92844.

California to fully reopen economy June 15

California is aiming to fully reopen its economy June 15. The date isn’t set in stone. And officials emphasize that getting to the point where California can widely reopen will hinge on two factors: a sufficient vaccine supply to inoculate all those who are eligible and stable and low numbers of people hospitalized with the disease.

California has lowest positivity rate in U.S.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that the state has the lowest COVID-19 positivity rate in the country. University of California, San Francisco Dr. George Rutherford said vaccination efforts are helping to reduce the spread of COVID-19. While it’s a positive trend, he said it’s not time to celebrate.

Biden to move up deadline for all adults to be eligible for vaccine

President Biden plans to announce Tuesday that he is moving up his deadline for states to make all American adults eligible for a coronavirus vaccine by almost two weeks.

16 pop-up vaccine clinics to offer Johnson & Johnson shots

LA Care Health Plan and Blue Shield of California Promise Health Plan will operate 16 pop-up COVID-19 vaccine clinics across Southern California. The clinics will offer Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which are approved for ages 18 and older.

OC health officials urge residents to get tested for COVID

“While our capacity has significantly increased, recent data show that the number of tests performed is declining,” said Dr. Clayton Chau, county health officer and director of the OC Health Care Agency. “The majority of our county population of 3.2 million people is still waiting to be vaccinated. As we begin opening more schools, youth sports and entertainment venues, it is crucial that we stay the course to protect each other.”

Think twice before laminating your COVID-19 vaccine card

While it may be tempting to get your vaccine card laminated as soon as possible, you should take your time and make sure you’ve considered a few things beforehand. Here’s what you should know about laminating your coveted vaccine card.

Dr. Fauci says U.S. will not require vaccine passports

The infectious disease expert, who is a leading COVID-19 advisor to President Joe Biden, has said he does not believe the federal government will be the main mover of a vaccine passport concept, and that businesses and educational institutions could likely enforce people to be vaccinated. Instead, Dr. Fauci thought an “individual entity,” such as universities, could require people to receive COVID-19 vaccines prior to returning.

Yellen warns that slow vaccine rollout in poor countries poses threat to U.S., global economies

While the United States and other rich countries are hoping for a return to normalcy as soon as this fall, many parts of the developing world are not on pace to have widespread vaccination of their populations until 2023 or 2024. Those countries have largely suffered more devastating economic impacts from COVID, in part because they do not have the fiscal capacity to authorize the levels of emergency spending approved in the United States.

Norwegian Cruise Lines asks CDC to let vaccinated passengers sail

Norwegian Cruise Line wants to start U.S. cruises again on July 4, and it’s willing to require all passengers and staff to be vaccinated before it sets sail. Norwegian, which despite its name is a U.S.-based company, sent a letter Monday to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, notifying it of its proposal. It’s the first major American cruise line to lay out plans for a resumption of U.S. sailings.

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.

Mariah Carey hits a high note for her COVID-19 vaccine

Mariah Carey’s vaccination was quite the performance. In a video posted on Instagram, Carey said she was “excited and nervous a little bit” about getting her first shot. But she took a breath, rolled up her sleeve and let out one of her famous high notes as the needle went into her arm. “Vaccine side effect: G6,” Carey wrote in the caption.

Get back to what you love

In this one-minute video, Google promotes getting vaccinated to get back to what you love.

#UCIconnected

‘Regaining myself through health’

There are a lot of unknowns with this virus that we’re facing and viruses we may face in the future. With these unknowns, there are a lot of factors that are simply out of our control, accidental exposures that result in infection, our genetics and how our body will choose to respond to infection, regulations imposed by officials that cause you to develop a new normal, etc. All this stress and change made it very easy for me to spend my days sitting at my desk snacking on chips and my nights sitting on the couch with ice cream in hand. I think for me, the lack of control of my life was causing my frustration and anxiety to just keep building up and make things feel kind of hopeless. One day I was listening to someone talk about discipline and how one of the few things in life that we have supreme control over is the foods we choose to eat and the activities we choose to do in our leisure time. After hearing those words I decided to focus my quarantine on improving my health.

I adopted a diet made up of whole foods, so I am regularly eating meals consisting of unprocessed meats, vegetables, and fruits (making sure that I am only consuming larger amounts of carbohydrate on days I am highly active and my body needs the extra fuel). I am also making sure to spend parts of my leisure time going on outdoor walks and twice a week performing compound lifts with weights. These easy additions to my life have greatly reduced my stress and anxiety, I look and feel so much better than a year ago, and I now wake up every day feeling excited and optimistic about what the day has in store for me.

-Alexander Dunn, electrical engineering undergraduate

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 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.