Pitt weighs covid vaccine mandate

The University of Pittsburgh is poised to join other colleges and universities that have mandated the covid-19 vaccination for students and staff.

The school is weighing a policy change and expects to announce its decision soon, a Pitt spokesman confirmed.

Pitt opted against requiring students, faculty and staff be vaccinated this fall. Instead, university officials decided to “strongly encourage” people get vaccinated and require weekly testing of those who did not.

The cost of testing, previously estimated at $20 million to $50 million a year, coupled with the difficulty of enforcing that policy and President Joe Biden’s executive order requiring all federal contractors to mandate that employees be vaccinated, may be weighing into the initiatives under consideration at Pitt.

Pitt conducts hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research and likely would be required to follow suit with a policy Penn State announced this week, which will require vaccines for specified staff and faculty members working on federal contracts.

But it appears Pitt is considering a broader vaccine policy.

“The university is in the process of considering, through its shared governance processes, a proposed interim policy that would require all faculty, staff and students on all campuses to be vaccinated or be granted an approved exemption in order to remain a community member. We are still working out the exact details but anticipate announcing the proposed interim policy soon,” a Pitt spokesman said Wednesday.

University vaccine policies varied from school to school across Pennsylvania this fall. Some private institutions including Carnegie Mellon, Chatham, Duquesne and Seton Hill universities required students and faculty to be vaccinated. Most public institutions here did not.

Penn State, a research university with 20 locations across the state, stopped short of mandating vaccines this fall. Instead, university officials opted to strongly encourage vaccination and require those who have not been vaccinated to undergo weekly testing.

This month, Penn Sate announced it would require all staff and faculty at University Park to be vaccinated. On Tuesday, it extended that mandate to six regional campuses where federal contract work is conducted, including Altoona, DuBois, Erie, Fayette, Harrisburg and Media.