Yale University has the second-most vaccinated undergraduate student body population in the Ivy League.
99.5% of Yale undergraduates have received a full COVID-19 vaccination, Yale Daily News reports, with the university reporting zero undergraduate COVID-19 cases in the first week of October. The only Ivy League school to top Yale in vaccination rate is Columbia University, where 99.7% of undergraduates are fully vaccinated.
“We are very pleased with the high rates of vaccination that we achieved through new policies, programs to make it easy to be vaccinated, frequent communication about vaccines and exemptions, and the partnership and commitment of so many members of our campus community,” Stephanie Spangler, Yale University’s COVID-19 Coordinator, tells Yale Daily News.
HIGH VACCINATION RATE ACROSS ENTIRE IVY LEAGUE
Nearly every university in the Ivy League has high COVID-19 vaccination rates.
Cornell University and Princeton University both have a vaccination rate of 99%; Brown University is at 98.8%; Harvard University is at 95% and Dartmouth College is at 92%.
So far, Yale has tested 5,624 individual undergraduate students with a zero positivity rate. Isolation housing capacity is also at 100%.
“Zero cases is an amazing accomplishment,” Yale professor Howard Forman tells Yale Daily News. “The undergraduates need to be congratulated and we need to appreciate how hard it is to be that safe, and they have done so.”
Vaccination efforts, experts say, have been key in the university’s return to campus plans.
“Last spring the University, with the advice of its public health experts, determined that achieving high rates of vaccination would be an important — likely the most important — protection against COVID-19 transmission,” Spangler tells Yale Daily News.
Sources: Yale Daily News