Faculty, staff urged to get vaccinated, boosted and upload proof

As the UB community settles into the spring semester routine, Allison Brashear, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, has a simple but urgent message: “We need all of our students, our faculty and our staff to get vaccinated and boosted when eligible,” she says. “In addition, we need them all to upload the proof that they have received all three doses as soon as they can.”

With 98% of UB students vaccinated, and more than 25,000 of them having uploaded proof of booster shots, she says the university is well on its way.

The numbers for employees haven’t quite kept up, however, because while many have received their primary vaccination series, plus a booster, many have not yet provided proof of vaccination to the university.

Human Resources reports that just 43% of fully vaccinated employees have uploaded their booster information.

“To keep the community safe, everyone needs to be vaccinated and boosted, and to upload that information,” says Brashear.

Faculty and staff who have received their vaccination series and/or booster shot are asked to upload documentation to Human Resources as soon as possible.

While vaccination has not been officially mandated for faculty and staff, Brashear explains that a high rate of vaccination is critical as the university weighs whether to relax some campus health guidelines, including the requirement for indoor masking.

“It’s been pretty amazing what UB has done in terms of getting 98% of our 30,000 students vaccinated, boosted when eligible, and their information fully uploaded,” she says. “It will be just as amazing if our faculty and staff can mirror the numbers of our students.

“Getting vaccinated is the most important step to take in protecting yourself and the community against COVID-19,” she notes. “By uploading that information, you are notifying the university community that you have taken this important step, which makes everyone at UB just a little more secure in coming to campus, and helps to guide the university in its decision-making as we look to ease some of the COVID-related guidelines”

“We will continue to follow the numbers and to urge everyone to get vaccinated, to get boosted as soon as you are eligible and to upload that proof as soon as you are boosted,” Brashear says. “This is the best way for all of us to stay safe and begin to resume normal operations.”