As COVID cases rise on campus, so does the need for essential workers
Plus, what vaccine distribution might look like in Colorado
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2016, the Colorado College men’s ice hockey team was playing the University of Wisconsin at the Broadmoor World Arena. (A player on the team recently tested positive for COVID-19, so CC’s ice hockey team is currently in quarantine.)
Today, the director of operations of Sodexo at CC and the general manager of Bon Appétit at CC describe the day-to-day life of the college’s essential workers, and the protocols in place to protect them from contracting the coronavirus. Also, we give you the highlights from Colorado’s vaccine distribution plan draft.
➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. Also, Infectious Disease Fellow Dr. Katherine Peterson explained some shortcomings of Colorado’s virus response.
✉️In Your Inbox: When you’re getting a deluge of emails, it’s easy to miss important updates. We’re here to help.
Nov. 19: Another off-campus student tested positive for COVID-19 and is now in isolation. They visited the El Pomar Sports Center on Nov. 17.
Nov. 20: A student living in South Hall received a positive COVID-19 test result and is now in isolation.
The college recently moved to “CC Alert Level 2.” This means it will increase its weekly testing to include up to 50% of the campus population, and employees are encouraged to work from home.
El Paso County will move to restrictions associated with “Level Red: Severe Risk” in Colorado’s COVID-19 dial framework by this Friday. What this means for CC: All food service will continue to be takeout only. Personal gatherings should only include your roommate(s). Campus offices and facilities will move to 10% capacity.
CC hopes to bring more students to campus for J Block, but they will wait to bring more students back until Block 5 if the caseloads in the county and state are “very high.”
⚠️1 in 49: The number of Coloradans who are now contagious with coronavirus, according to Gov. Jared Polis.
As COVID cases in El Paso County soar, someone still needs to cook and take out the trash: The essential workers who keep CC’s campus running
If you’re not physically on campus, you might have forgotten about some of the true heroes behind Colorado College’s operations in Pandemic Fall: the essential workers. Without them, we wouldn’t have food, clean facilities, and empty trash cans.
Colorado College works with the hospitality and facilities management company Sodexo to provide essential services like deep-cleaning and waste removal, and food management company Bon Appétit to provide dining services. While there may be a de-densified campus for students, these workers are still expected to be on the job every day.
Before COVID-19 hit, Bon Appétit had an average of 170 full and part-time employees working each day on campus, said Shannon Wilson, Bon Appétit general manager at CC. Now, that number is closer to 50. For Sodexo, Bronson Terry, who runs operations for Sodexo at CC, said about 70 Sodexo employees are working on campus on an average day in Pandemic Fall, 10 of whom are dedicated to COVID-19 disinfection of high-touch areas alone.
When the pandemic reared its ugly head last spring, Terry said Sodexo was able to avoid furloughing any employees at CC. Bon Appétit, on the other hand, furloughed roughly 200 employees, said Wilson. They have since brought back most of those furloughed, but there have been around a dozen or so permanent layoffs, Wilson said.
What happens if an essential employee tests positive for COVID-19
So far, three Bon Appétit employees and three Sodexo employees associated with the college have tested positive for COVID-19.
“If our employees are sick and they have any of the symptoms of COVID-19, they are strongly encouraged to have a COVID test,” Terry said. “And we have signage all over our office — if you are feeling sick, stay home,” he added.
Positive employees must quarantine for at least 14 days and be symptom-free before they can return to work. Though the employees are an essential part of the CC community, the college doesn’t include Sodexo or Bon Appétit workers in its on-campus symptomatic or random testing. This is because they are contracted workers, not employees of the school, according to COVID-19 Emergency Manager Maggie Santos.
Linda Petro, who oversees random testing at the college, said there is interest in including the Sodexo and Bon Appétit workers in future testing efforts, however. “We are exploring that,” she told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
But for now, workers who need a COVID-19 test do so through El Paso County.
Terry said he personally has not seen any problems with conducting testing outside of the school. Sodexo’s healthcare benefits include “coverage of these kinds of things,” he said.
How much paid sick leave and paid vacation time a Sodexo employee receives typically depends on their years of service with Sodexo. Most employees start with at least a week of paid sick leave and a week of paid vacation, but because of the pandemic, employees who test positive for COVID-19 or need to take care of a relative, are offered an additional potential of 21 days of COVID-19 pay, Terry said.
As for Bon Appétit, employees receive three sick days per year, according to Wilson, and are also able to use any vacation time they have accrued.
“Some save that and just apply for unemployment benefits, some use it,” Wilson told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “It’s up to the employee.”
A look at the daily COVID-19 protocols for essential workers
Before clocking in, both Sodexo and Bon Appétit employees must have their temperatures checked and answer a series of questions for a health screen, much like CC requires before students can enter a building. If anyone logs they’re experiencing symptoms or fails to pass the temperature check, they’re sent home.
Every morning, Sodexo workers gather in what Terry calls “safety huddles” to talk about COVID-19 safety. There, they review the importance of following standard protocols such as mask-wearing, social distancing, and handwashing.
While Sodexo’s custodial staff previously worked together in small teams, now workers perform most of their duties individually. Unless working alone in a room, employees must wear their masks and gloves at all times. Terry asked supervisors to minimize their interactions with the staff, but if people are going to interact, Terry said it should be brief, socially-distanced with a mask, and outside if possible.
“If they go out for, let’s say, a smoke break, they still need to adhere to the six-foot distancing,” Wilson said of her Bon Appétit employees.
When working in confined spaces is required, such as preparing food in the kitchen, scheduling of employees is staggered and workplaces are set up to be six feet apart, according to Wilson.
“Obviously, working in the kitchen, it’s not always possible, but we do our best,” she said.
When CC students are directly exposed to the coronavirus and need to isolate or quarantine — like entire dorms of students, in some cases — Bon Appétit employees are charged with preparing meals, and Sodexo employees are the ones responsible for cleaning and disinfecting the spaces.
For the dorm-wide quarantines this fall, Bon Appétit prepared around 300 daily meal kits for students with lunch, dinner, and breakfast for the following day.
“It takes quite a few employees to produce just one meal kit,” Wilson said. “We are still sourcing local food, preparing from scratch, and doing our best ... to keep meeting the needs of the community,” she later added.
While Bon Appétit worked to feed quarantined students, Sodexo was tasked with cleaning up after them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends waiting 24 hours before cleaning or disinfecting a space where someone with COVID-19 has been. At CC, Terry said employees typically wait closer to 72 hours before entering the building, and when they do, they are required to don the same sort of personal protective equipment that healthcare workers treating virus patients might use themselves.
“The personal protective equipment is excessively more than is necessary, but ... we want to keep them safe,” Terry said.
The employees who can’t work from home
When CC moved to Level 2 precautions last week, the school encouraged its employees to work from home. But Sodexo workers can’t log onto their laptops to mop dorm floors, and Bon Appétit employees can’t prepare food remotely.
Research has shown that COVID-19 disproportionately affects essential workers and people of color because of their likelihood of having jobs that can’t be done remotely. In that regard, CC’s essential employees are no exception.
Wilson said the alert levels don’t really impact the Bon Appétit staff until the college hits level 4, at which point staffing levels would actually increase so they could prepare the 3-in-1 meals for campus quarantines.
Colorado’s COVID-19 dial framework currently puts El Paso County one level away from the highest stage, “Level Purple: Extreme Risk.” Yet even if the dial moves to purple, Terry said, Sodexo will still be there.
“We are considered an essential service for the college. Even if the college were to go all the way into the purple zone, somebody’s got to be here to take the trash out and keep things clean,” Terry said. “Especially in an isolation situation, the trash builds up very quickly ... So, we will be here to support and help the college through the whole thing.”
If you’re an essential employee with Sodexo or Bon Appétit, we want to hear about your experience (even if it’s anonymous) working on the Colorado College campus this fall. Email ccreportingproject@gmail.com to connect.
We read it so you don’t have to: Colorado’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan draft
The race for a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine is well underway. Pfizer says clinical trial results show its vaccine is 95% effective. Moderna states clinical trial results show its vaccine is nearly 95% effective, as well. And recently, AstraZeneca announced its vaccine also appears effective, though less effective than Pfizer and Moderna.
In preparation for potential vaccine approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Colorado about a month ago released a dense 100-page document with information about the state’s early plans for distributing a potential COVID-19 vaccine.
We don’t blame you if you didn’t make it to the end of the document — or even halfway through. Luckily for you, we read all 100 pages. Here’s what you need to know.
Colorado has categorized the state population into the following groups:
Critical workforce: healthcare workers, first responders, and public health personnel
Congregate housing: homeless shelters, group homes, correctional facilities, college dorms, and congregate housing used for some workers, such as agricultural and migrant workers
Essential workers: grocery and food service workers; transportation, electric, and water workers; teachers; vaccine manufacturing personnel, etc.
Individuals at risk for moderate to severe disease and death: nursing or long-term care facility residents, individuals over age 65, individuals with underlying health conditions
General public: adults age 18-64
Using the group framework above, Colorado created a preliminary plan for vaccine distribution to prioritize the most at-risk populations. The plan calls for seven phases:
Phase 1A: Inpatient and outpatient healthcare workers will have the opportunity to receive the vaccine.
Phase 1B: First responders, public health personnel, and correctional workers will have the opportunity to receive the vaccine.
Phase 1C: Residents and patients at assisted living, long-term care, and nursing-home facilities will have the opportunity to receive the vaccine.
Phase 2A: Essential workers who interact directly with the public or work in high-density environments will have the opportunity to receive the vaccine. This phase also includes people living in congregate housing, such as adults living at homeless shelters, incarcerated adults, adults living in group homes, workers living in congregate settings, and students living in college dorms.
Phase 2B: People aged 65 or older, adults with certain underlying medical conditions, immunocompromised adults, and adults who received a placebo during a COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial will have the opportunity to receive the vaccine.
Phase 3: Adults age 18-64 who are not high-risk will have the opportunity to receive the vaccine.
People not currently included in the above plan are children and pregnant women because of their exclusion from current vaccine trials. The state is anticipating guidance from the federal government about the safety and efficacy of vaccine distribution in these populations.
Then, there are phases within the phases, depending on how many vaccine supplies would be available. If there are not enough initial vaccine doses to vaccinate all of Phase 1A, inpatient healthcare workers would receive priority over outpatient healthcare workers because of a higher risk of exposure. In other phases, the state would prioritize individuals at high risk of severe disease and death, and areas of Colorado with especially high COVID-19 positivity and transmission rates.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment says it doesn’t expect cost to be an obstacle for people who need to get vaccinated. An excerpt from its website:
“As a condition of receiving free COVID-19 vaccines from the federal government, vaccine providers will not be allowed to charge individuals for the vaccine or administration of the vaccine. ... We expect that most public and private insurance companies will cover any administration fees so that there is no cost to the person getting vaccinated.”
Wondering how long it would take Colorado to get a vaccine to everyone who needs one?
It could be a while.
Colorado distribution plan draft authors estimated how many people might be in each category, and here’s what they found: 284,592 in Phases 1A and 1B; 46,941 in Phase 1C; 669,063 in Phase 2A; 2,343,851 in Phase 2B; and 1,937,711 in Phase 3. The federal government controls the distribution of vaccine doses to states, which they will base on state population size. The Colorado Sun reported Colorado is currently projected to receive no more than a couple million doses by the first few months of 2021, and there may not be enough doses to even start vaccinating the general public until summer.
What this means: a vaccine is not going to be the magical elixir people were hoping to save Colorado from its current upswing in cases. But, public health officials including Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis are hoping the promising vaccine results show a faint light at the end of the tunnel.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Isabel Hicks, and Esteban Candelaria in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear every Monday.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
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