With changes earlier this spring to the overall public health direction with regards to COVID-19, policies on vaccine and mask mandates also shift at local post-secondary campuses next month.
Although COVID restrictions were dropped in most settings in Ontario in March, all of Ontario’s colleges and universities opted to retain vaccine and masking policies until the end of the winter semester.
But with the end of that semester coming up, things are changing at Sudbury’s university and two colleges.
A spokesperson for Cambrian College said for the spring semester, which starts the first week of May, proof of vaccination and masking will not be required as conditions of access to campus.
Greater Sudbury’s French-language college, Collège Boréal, said vaccination policies at Boréal will no longer be in effect as of May 1.
Masking requirements will remain in effect at Boréal until mid-August, at which time they will be reviewed and decisions will be made in time for the fall semester.
Laurentian University announced last month it intends to pause its policies on COVID-19 vaccinations and face-coverings as of May 1, although it looks like the university is leaning toward extending masking into later this spring.
During the April 22 meeting of Laurentian’s board of governors, members voted to put the university’s COVID-19 vaccination policy in “abeyance” (or to pause it).
But university president Robert Haché said last week a final decision has not actually yet been made on the masking policy.
“University Executive Heads will be meeting over the next two weeks to review guidance from the Science Table, and members of the University’s Operational Resumption Committee will also be consulting with Public Health Sudbury and Districts,” Haché said in a written report presented at the April 19 meeting of LU’s senate.
“Information gathered at these meetings will be considered before a final decision is made with respect to pausing the face-covering policy.”
Laurentian’s vice-president of research, Tammy Eger, who has led the COVID file for the university, said meetings have been underway with stakeholders on the issue.
“That policy is within the purview of the president (of Laurentian),” she said, during the April 22 board of governors meeting.
“We'll have a recommendation to the president very early next week, in terms of whether that policy should be paused or extended.
“Based on the evidence we've gathered to date, the recommendation will likely be to extend that policy for the first part of our spring semester, which would go until June 13.”
Haché pointed out that Laurentian would only put a pause on its COVID vaccination (and possibly masking) policies, and not cancel them outright.
This “will allow us to react more rapidly, should it become necessary and should guidance change to reinstate it,” Haché said.
During the Laurentian senate meeting last week, Christina McMillan-Boyles, an assistant professor in LU’s school of nursing, said she finds the current approach to COVID “highly problematic.”
She said the “lackadaisical approach to lessening masking and vaccination requirements for campus” puts students studying health-care disciplines at risk of contracting the virus.
They are “then going out into vulnerable populations in the community in long-term care and in an acute care setting.”
McMillan-Boyles said there’s no evidence “to suggest that removing those things is a good idea, nor is flip-flopping.
“So saying we're going to ease those types of precautions or think about easing them, and then potentially put them back in place later, that is highly confusing for students,” she said.
Haché said he personally will continue to wear his mask on campus and is booked for his fourth COVID shot.
But he said that public health policy is driven by government and the chief medical officer of health at Public Health Sudbury & Districts.
Haché said Laurentian and Ontario’s universities are provided with legal advice “as to what we can or cannot do with respect to current government policies.”
“We are absolutely being as conservative as we possibly can, given the legal advice we're receiving on what we actually can or cannot do,” Haché said.
“So I absolutely understand what you're saying. I sympathize with it. I agree with it. And I truly do wish we could do more. But we are in a province that is providing the guidance that you see around you.”
