Pitt recommending but not requiring covid-19 vaccine

The University of Pittsburgh is encouraging students and staff to be vaccinated against covid-19, but the school won’t require vaccination.

In a Board of Trustees meeting Friday morning, Chancellor Patrick Gallagher announced the university will not mandate vaccines, also acknowledging having an unvaccinated population on campus “will complicate our responsibility to ensure the campus is safe and healthy for everyone.”

“The plans for the fall at Pitt are based on a simple fact,” Gallagher said. “We believe that the vaccines are safe, available and highly effective, and we strongly recommend and expect all of our community — students, faculty and staff — to be fully vaccinated before they come back on campus for the fall term. However, we realize that some will not or cannot get the vaccine, and our safety program must be able to accommodate the risks associated with having some of portion of our community that is not vaccinated.”

He continued to say the university would not “bar somebody from attending or working at Pitt based on their vaccine status.”

The virus still will be circulating when the fall semester begins, Gallagher said, noting recently-discovered variants — such as the delta variant, first identified in India — appear to be more contagious that the variants circulating during last academic year. However, Gallagher said increased vaccination should help keep the virus from circulating as easily as it did last year.

“The vaccination rates, while slowing down, continue to progress to levels that should greatly attenuate the size and scale of outbreaks in our communities,” Gallagher said.

To ensure the campus remains safe for everyone — including those who aren’t vaccinated — measures such as covid-19 testing, quarantining and personal protective equipment might be required next year. Vaccinated individuals, however, “will likely be exempted from many of those requirements,” Gallagher said.

Pitt struggled to contain virus outbreaks on its campus last academic year, when the school’s Covid-19 Medical Response Office issued a message warning the virus’s spread was “endangering our campus and surrounding communities.” A surge in cases in late March spurred a shelter-in-place order for students. The university suspended several students from campus for flouting covid-19 mitigation rules and suspended Greek life organizations over health and safety violations.

Pitt’s decision to leave vaccination choices up to students and employees comes as many colleges and universities are weighing decisions regarding vaccination requirements. Carnegie Mellon University is requiring covid-19 vaccines, along with Duquesne and Chatham. Saint Vincent College is strongly recommending, but not requiring, the vaccine, and state-owned universities would need the state Legislature to permit them to require the vaccine, something it has not done.

Gallagher said Pitt’s plans for the fall semester are “fully consistent” with the latest health guidelines and promised the campus will be safe for all students, even without a vaccine mandate.

“Next year is not back to pre-covid. It’s not back to fully normal,” he said. “But if most or all of us get the vaccine, it will be very close to the same robust environment at Pitt that existed before this pandemic. Depending on how large the unvaccinated population is, we may have disruptions if the imposition of virus control measures to ensure safety are necessary. But the campus will be safe.”