University Vaccination Mandates Become the Norm, As the World Prepares for Another COVID-19 Wave

Epidemiologists worldwide are warning of another COVID-19 wave expected to reach its culmination in December, just before the year-end holidays. The fourth wave is expected to hit some world parts hard, in spite of their high vaccination rates, though those unvaccinated are expected to be affected most.

In order to avoid shutting down due to COVID-19 cases and another year of online classes, universities worldwide are now more than ever pushing their students and staff to vaccinate against the Coronavirus.

According to Erudera’s University Vaccine Requirement Checker, which is a new tool that enables students to check whether their university has a vaccination mandate in place, the number of universities asking students to vaccinate is high, in particular in the United States and Europe.

Universities like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, New York University, Technical University of Berlin, Aix-Marseille University, University of Vienna and more, are amongst the ‘pioneers’ of universities making vaccination a must in order for staff and students to have access to the campus facilities.

“In the United States alone, more than 700 higher education institutions have already imposed COVID-19 vaccine mandates. However, many students, domestic and international, remain hesitant about getting vaccinated,” state the experts behind Erudera’s University Vaccine Requirement Checker.

In a bid to push students to vaccinate, some universities have attempted to lure them by offering money. For example, Wayne State University, which is a public research university in Detroit, has offered students $10 grants if they get vaccinated against COVID-19.

The campaign turns out, has worked pretty well, as, by July, the majority of this university’s staff and students had been vaccinated.

“Earlier this month, we conducted a campus-wide survey to better understand our campus’ vaccination status. The results were encouraging: Approximately 86 percent of all respondents — including 96 percent of all faculty respondents — reported that they are fully vaccinated. Approximately 81 percent of our undergraduate and 91 percent of our graduate student respondents reported being fully vaccinated,” reads the report published on July 26.

However, the majority of universities are imposing harsher measures, like fines. For example, Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University has warned students who are not vaccinated that until they get the first dose, they risk being fined up to $200 per week or lose access to the campus’ Wi-Fi.

The University of Virginia, on the other hand, had disenrolled over 200 students before the beginning of the fall semester for failing to comply with the vaccination requirement. Whereas Rutgers University has threatened students it would deny them campus housing if they don’t get vaccinated while also preventing them from accessing their university emails. The latter is the first university to impose the COVID-19 vaccine mandate back in March this year.

The harsh strategy has worked out as well, as the University of Virginia, by August this year, had reported that approximately 96.6 percent of its students had confirmed that they are vaccinated against COVID-19, including 97.1 percent of students living in on-Grounds residence halls.