What a COVID Vaccine Will Mean For UCSB

ISLA VISTA, CA –– As cases in the United States continue to rise, the urgency of a COVID-19 vaccine also rises. However, this vaccine may not be widely available until Summer 2021. Multiple countries and universities are working together to research and create several different forms of a potential vaccine.

Operation Warp Speed in the United States details how the government will produce and distribute vaccines to the population. Operation Warp Speed’s plan is to distribute 300 million doses of effective vaccines starting January 2021, beginning with essential workers and those most at risk, then to those least at risk. Vaccine candidates include, but are not limited to, AstraZeneca/Oxford, Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson (Janssen Pharmaceutical). Warp Speed is also committed to providing the vaccine at no or low cost, making the vaccine easily accessible to all communities.

On November 9, 2020, Pfizer announced that their vaccine was found to be 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants. This vaccine was tested in a diverse group, and only 94 of the 43,538 participants contracted the disease during the trial. Pfizer is now waiting for FDA approval to begin distribution in the United States.

California has announced that a FDA approved vaccine will undergo further review before being distributed among residents. However, Governor Newsom has also said that he does not believe a vaccine will be able to be widely distributed until at least 2021.

The timeline for a viable, safe vaccine also has implications on schools, UCSB being one of them. Students and faculty alike are questioning when UCSB will resume in-person classes, and whether a return to normal operations is depends on a vaccine. While some schools have opened campus and offer a limited amount of in-person classes, UCSB’s campus has largely remained closed for the fall quarter, with classes being offered online and housing only available to a limited number of students.

Dr. Ali Javanbakht, UCSB Student Health Medical Director, explained that while a vaccine is crucial to ending the pandemic, it is unclear as to how a viable vaccine will impact the university’s reopening.

“A vaccine will certainly be considered the ‘end point’ of the pandemic—meaning that if it works well enough to truly prevent the disease incidence and severity, the entire nation can open up. This will also likely be a phased approach as vaccine doses are administered throughout the nation. Though a vaccine certainly is critical, we can’t speculate on how it will impact the campus’s overall plans,” said Dr. Javanbakht.

For the students that live on campus, UCSB has opened up housing with new safety protocols, including mandatory weekly testing. There is also testing available for asymptomatic individuals for students who do not live on campus in Isla Vista for no charge.

As students register for a remote winter quarter at UCSB, it is still uncertain as to how the university will approach Winter 2021 housing and Spring 2021 instruction.

“Decisions [for UCSB’s reopening] will be guided by state and local public health orders, recommendations from our campus medical experts and conditions at the time. Administrators, campus medical experts, deans and faculty members are meeting daily and those discussions are taking place,” Dr. Javanbakht said.

How UCSB will return once a vaccine is available is dependent on guidelines set by state and local public health orders, and how the administration will decide when it is safe to return to in person classes is still up in the air. However, UCSB’s plans do not fall solely on a vaccine–students must also help stop the spread of COVID-19 in Isla Vista and the surrounding community.

“Students have a very important role to play in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Following public health orders, consistently wearing face coverings when outside their personal living space, maintaining 6-foot physical distance and avoiding social gatherings with anyone outside their immediate households can go a long way to helping keep COVID-19 away from themselves, their friends and their families,” Dr. Javanbakht said.