BY SANDRA GUY
Be sure to read the details of DePaul University’s COVID vaccination requirement for Fall 2021 enrollment to ensure you have had doses from approved manufacturers — and if not, that you contact the admissions office.
DePaul is among 400 U.S. colleges and universities that will require students to be immunized against COVID-19, but American students appear to have an easier time in meeting the rules. That’s because students must have had two doses from Pfizer 21 days apart; two doses from Moderna 28 days apart or one dose from Johnson & Johnson. They’re three of eight vaccines that the World Health Organization (WHO) has authorized.
Others that will meet DePaul’s rules are AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Serum Institute of India-COVISHIELD.
DePaul, like most other U.S. colleges and universities for the past few decades, also requires that students provide proof they’ve been vaccinated against viral diseases like mumps, measles, rubella, tetanus/diphtheria/pertussis and meningococcal conjugate. To view your immunization status and submit documents, use your BlueKey information to log in to Campus Connect.
You may use the DePaul University Immunization Form to ask your doctor or other healthcare provider to complete and sign.
If you cannot locate your immunization records, the final step is to take a blood test called a titer test that can determine whether you have sufficient antibodies to be “sufficiently immune” to a disease. If your lab results are negative or equivocal, you will have to start a series of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccinations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires for children.
Though COVID has caused people to believe that vaccinations are unusual, these modern childhood vaccinations have been required at least since the 1970s and laws requiring vaccination for school entry were upheld by the U.S Supreme Court in 1922.
Meanwhile, students taking summer classes at DePaul University are encouraged to wear masks, with those still unvaccinated required to do so, and must continue to maintain six-foot physical distancing in reduced-capacity classrooms.