What vet schools are online right now?

[Seawolf420]

Hey all I was just curious as to which vet schools are entirely online right now given that COVID cases are pretty high nation wide.
What is your school doing to avoid students catching/spreading the virus?

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[MixedAnimals77]

You'll pry get more answers over on the prevet side. Things are always changing but right now...For WSU I'm not totally sure what they're doing in didactics but I do know they're still in person. The cvm requires everyone wearing masks either kn95 or surgical masks. Cloth masks are no longer allowed. If you're sick stay home. Ik food events have been suspended for the month but the rest tbd as far as I know.

Life is essentially moving on just with masks on and urging boosters/vaccination and more support in staying home when sick.

 

[SkiOtter]

Illinois is doing the first week online so that people can do the mandatory saliva PCR testing before they go back to in person without it cutting into their winter break and causing an uproar. You are also required to be vaccinated and get your booster or you have to test every other day if you have an approved reason to not get vaccinated. Masks are still required and they’re recommending N95, KN95, or ASTM Level 3 surgical masks and will be distributing an N95(iirc?) to every staff, student, and faculty. This was all determined by main campus.

 

[britzen]

For VA-MD. Clinics in person. Zoom optional for the didactic classes I think.

Masks required. KN95s provided by the school and encouraged. Boosters required unless you have a medical exemption.

Pretty sure we are getting torn up by omicron. There have been a lot more notifications of positive employees than last semester. We went from maybe 1 a week last semester to multiple per day now.

They don't notify us school wide for student infections but I know of at least six 4th year students off the top of my head who got sick in the last month or two even though they were vaccinated.

 

[SkiOtter]

Pretty sure we are getting torn up by omicron. There have been a lot more notifications of positive employees than last semester. We went from maybe 1 a week last semester to multiple per day now.

The first two weeks of this year we had 20 and then 28 new positive staff cases. They don’t even count students in these numbers. I know that there are some students positive as well including someone who was supposed to be on ortho with me so we were down to 6 people 🥲

^actually it was the last week of 2021 and first of 22

 

[britzen]

The first two weeks of this year we had 20 and then 28 new positive staff cases. They don’t even count students in these numbers. I know that there are some students positive as well including someone who was supposed to be on ortho with me so we were down to 6 people 🥲

^actually it was the last week of 2021 and first of 22

I haven't been counting but sounds about the same as here

Also the policies for staying home if you're sick in clinical year don't seem to be helping. They try to be encouraging by saying you won't fail the rotation!*

*but also there are no tests available for an average of 5 days out...
and if you don't have confirmed covid you won't be excused to stay home...
and also even if you *do* have confirmed covid, they'll make you do extra overnight and weekend on call duty on top of your regular on call/ icu duties during your next rotation to make up the days that you missed...
Or you won't graduate on time and will have to stay for extra rotations in the summer!

.... Like, if someone has COVID can we just let people do whatever they did last year when the hospital was shut down? There were a lot of virtual rotations and that was acceptable for the class of 2020 and 2021 but for some reason that's not allowed now for the class of 2022? Even for just a 5 day quarantine out of a 21 day rotation? It's really just incentivizing people to not get tested and to keep coming to the school imo. (I think this may be an AVMA issue more than a school issue about what's allowed and what's not for receiving credit, but still.)

 

[SkiOtter]

I haven't been counting but sounds about the same as here

Also the policies for staying home if you're sick in clinical year don't seem to be helping. They try to be encouraging by saying you won't fail the rotation!*

*but also there are no tests available for an average of 5 days out...
and if you don't have confirmed covid you won't be excused to stay home...
and also even if you *do* have confirmed covid, they'll make you do extra overnight and weekend on call duty on top of your regular on call/ icu duties during your next rotation to make up the days that you missed...
Or you won't graduate on time and will have to stay for extra rotations in the summer!

.... Like, if someone has COVID can we just let people do whatever they did last year when the hospital was shut down? There were a lot of virtual rotations and that was acceptable for the class of 2020 and 2021 but for some reason that's not allowed now for the class of 2022? Even for just a 5 day quarantine out of a 21 day rotation? It's really just incentivizing people to not get tested and to keep coming to the school imo. (I think this may be an AVMA issue more than a school issue about what's allowed and what's not for receiving credit, but still.)

Yeahhh I wouldn’t be counting but we get told actual numbers every week by the assoc director of biosecurity and safety 😂
Thankfully tests are really easy to get here since our VDL does a saliva PCR for our whole campus and you get it back within 24h and usually less than 12h later.
I can’t remember what they did for people who had covid last year, but if you were just exposed last year as a clinical student, public health put you on “modified quarantine” where you still come to clinics every day but you have to quarantine as normal outside the normal clinical day because they classify us as essential since the school can’t run without fourth years 🙃 @battie had to do that while on soft tissue and I had to bring her her groceries 😅
Currently a lot of our ER peeps and surgery/OR techs are out with covid

 

[SkiOtter]

Idk why part of that didn’t post but

I was just on ortho and they were actually having US be OR techs and opening instruments and getting suture and such if we weren’t in a surgery.
One girl who was supposed to be on the rotation with us ended up testing positive and didn’t come to the first day (was sick and got tested that day and got her results the morning of day 2, thankfully). Pretty sure since she didn’t set foot in the hospital for ortho that she has to redo the whole rotation and I believe the options will be either during a vacation block if she has one left or after graduation. I know that anesthesia and maybe another 1-2 rotations have online modules you can do if you’re out sick so you don’t have to make anything up which is AMAZING. I think the main U still is on a 10 day quarantine which means we are too which is essentially the entire rotation 🥲

 

[britzen]

if you were just exposed last year as a clinical student, public health put you on “modified quarantine” where you still come to clinics every day but you have to quarantine as normal outside the normal clinical day because they classify us as essential since the school can’t run without fourth years 🙃

I mean... c'mon. Can't go get groceries but can definitely be less than 6 feet from people all day long while working

 

[SkiOtter]

I mean... c'mon. Can't go get groceries but can definitely be less than 6 feet from people all day long while working

Y E P
Now if you’re fully vaccinated you don’t have to quarantine at all iirc but if you’re unvaccinated or not boosted, you have to do the stupid modified quarantine

 

[battie]

I mean... c'mon. Can't go get groceries but can definitely be less than 6 feet from people all day long while working

I was hella annoyed. Meanwhile, I did get covid about 2.5 weeks ago, missed 10 days of work because I was symptomatic (only 2 days of actually feeling really gross). They sent me home *before* I had my positive test and *after I'd had a negative test a few days ago.

Just another example of a how academia is isolated from the real world and how it works.

 

[WonderingStudent]

Tufts is still currently in person (we always have a livestream option to watch lectures from home). But they did increase our required testing from once a week to every other day and we are all required to be boostered. Even with these measures, there are still a lot of people in didactics and in clinics that have COVID right now.

 

[gottadvm]

My school stopped sending out case information in mid-December. So we have no idea how many people have tested positive. We are all in the dark - especially if we are not on campus this rotation. The rumour is that clinicians and students have been "dropping like flies" ..... The school is apparently now just doing the old "bury your head in the sand" tactic.

 

[alleycat03]

At KSU, we are still in person. Masks have been required all year. We are encouraged to get vaccinated and boosted but there’s no requirement to do so. They also told us that we should be wearing N95 masks and at a minimum a surgical mask, but there’s no requirement against wearing cloth masks. They also aren’t providing us with any masks. We can watch recorded lectures (no live zoom option) but labs are not recorded. I’m trying really hard to avoid getting sick so I don’t have to isolate and miss a week (or more) of classes, especially labs.