Feel Well, Do Well: Health & Safety

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In 2019, we launched Feel Well, Do Well, an initiative designed to make students’ health and wellness a college-wide endeavor, beyond just the Rosemary Furman Counseling Center and Primary Care Health Service. Although we did not know it at the time, starting a campus-wide conversation around health and wellness was a precursor to what we must ask of our community until an effective vaccine or treatment is found for COVID-19.

The health and safety of our community is our top priority as we adapt during the COVID-19 pandemic, and we must all recognize that this is a shared responsibility as members of the Barnard community.

The Feel Well, Do Well: Health & Safety plan requires:

• Self-screening. Mandatory remote screening procedure to monitor health conditions of members of the community, allowing for appropriate actions to be taken should infection be detected.
• Testing and contact tracing. Testing plan and contact tracing program to monitor for potential spread and to test people with symptoms.
• Face masks/coverings. Disposable masks or cloth face coverings must be worn at all times in public settings (public spaces, meeting rooms, hallways, stairwells, elevators, classrooms, restrooms, etc.). Each faculty member and staff member will be provided with disposable masks as needed.
• Good hygiene. Emphasis on handwashing. Hand sanitizer will also be made available throughout campus facilities.
• Maintaining physical distancing. All members of the campus community will comply with the New York State requirement to maintain at least 6 feet of distance wherever possible. Individuals should avoid gathering in groups and should stay out of crowded places.
• Staying in if you feel ill. Faculty and staff who feel sick are to stay home, even if their symptoms are inconsistent with common COVID-19 symptoms.
• Flu shots. Pending further consideration, all members of the campus community will be required to provide evidence of a flu shot.
• Community pledge. Community members will be expected to acknowledge and adhere to new community expectations through a community pledge that emphasizes the responsibility of every member of the community in helping to maintain a safe campus environment by complying with all federal, state and local requirements and Barnard COVID-19 policies. 

The College is asking all students, faculty and staff acknowledge in writing and adhere to a Community Pledge. With this commitment, all promise to abide by a set of rules for behavior on campus. These include requirements around the wearing of masks in public, hand-washing and sanitation, social distancing, the use of designated spaces at designated times, as well as other behaviors to help promote the well-being of all on campus. The College asks everyone to rise to this challenge with purpose and focus and to embrace the responsibility of care.

Acknowledgement. The College remains steadfast in its commitment to keeping campus as safe an environment as possible for the Barnard community by following local, state and federal guidelines and requirements. However, the College cannot provide a risk-free environment. All individuals returning to campus and taking part in the testing program will be required to acknowledge the inherent risks of returning to campus during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Staff and faculty should log onto my.barnard.edu and will find the pledge under the COVID-19 Information tab.

Students sign the pledge when they complete the Semester Contingency form within the Barnard Housing Portal.

Barnard has established a COVID-19 testing program to further monitor and manage the health of our campus and for those utilizing Columbia’s campus. CoVerified is the software that Barnard has implemented as an app, to manage daily symptom screenings, assist with contact tracing, schedule tests, and provide test result notifications.

1. Entry Test: The initial entry test is the first required element of the College’s comprehensive testing program. 
2. Regular Testing: All members of the community participating in the testing program are also required to participate in Barnard’s regular testing program, in which asymptomatic individuals (i.e. people who aren’t feeling sick) are tested on a regular basis as a way for the College to monitor the health & wellbeing of the campus.
3. Daily Self-Screening using CoVerified: Faculty, students and staff are required to use the Barnard screening tool in the app CoVerified every day they access the Barnard campus to acknowledge that they are feeling well and that they have not knowingly been in contact with anyone who is symptomatic or has tested positive for COVID-19. It is the only mechanism by which Barnard community members can access Barnard’s campus. They must be prepared to show a “green screen” when they enter campus and it will alert them to stay at home when a “red screen” appears.
4. Accessing Columbia's Campus: All those accessing Columbia’s campus (faculty, students and staff) will need to complete the Columbia screening app ReopenCU, which is different from Barnard’s app.

To be eligible to use CoVerified, members of the Barnard community must have first completed the following steps:

Faculty & Staff

• Signed the Barnard Community Pledge
• Completed the Barnard health and safety training (at the end of the Community Pledge). Faculty members may alternatively complete Columbia's RASCAL training and provide their completion certificate to Human Resources. If a faculty member has already completed the training and needs to locate their certificate, click on “View certified test history” on the left sidebar of the Rascal webpage and then click on “Generate transcript”. Save the training certificate and email it to hr@barnard.edu.
• Provided a negative COVID-19 PCR (diagnostic) entry test, either by taking a test on Barnard's campus, or sending the results of a test taken by your own doctor/urgent care to Barnard’s HR. Faculty and staff should complete this form to schedule an entry test.

Students

• Signed the Barnard Community Pledge in the StarRez housing portal.

• Completed the Barnard health and safety training (at the end of the Community Pledge)

• Provided a negative COVID-19 PCR (diagnostic) entry test by taking a test on Barnard's campus. Students can find the most up-to-date information about Barnard’s testing program and how to schedule their entry test in the On-Campus Testing Information and Scheduling for Students document.

Information about Barnard’s contact tracing program

All faculty, students and staff who are participating in Barnard’s testing program  are expected to participate in contact tracing efforts undertaken by Barnard and/or New York City. Community members will be expected to comply with recommendations from contact tracers to quarantine and/or get tested.

Barnard's contact tracing program supports the efforts of the New York City Test &Trace Corps. Working closely with Primary Care Health Services, the Barnard testing team, and the College’s Quarantine/Isolation Coordinator, the College’s contact tracing team will: 

• reach out to Barnard community members participating in the College’s testing program who fail to receive a “green screen” or who test positive for COVID-19. For those who test positive, the contact tracing team will reach out to get the names of any Barnard community members with whom they’ve been in close contact (primarily defined as within 6 feet for more than 10 minutes, masked or unmasked);
• provide information about the next steps for isolation;
• reach out to the Barnard faculty, students or staff who were identified as a possible close contact of a confirmed positive case and inform them that they must quarantine based on their possible exposure;
• provide information about additional support as they manage their own quarantine/isolation.

Barnard must notify the NYC Department of Health about positive cases. The College posts two information dashboards - one on our website and one posted by the NYC DOH. The New York City Test & Trace Corps will manage the contact tracing for people with possible exposure who are not Barnard faculty or staff.

Our contact tracers have been trained using a course developed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (the same course that New York State and New York City use for their training), and they also get additional training that reflects Barnard’s commitment to supporting people who identify as belonging to communities who have experienced systemic oppression and bias (e.g., people of color, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, justice-involved persons, persons experiencing domestic/intimate partner violence, people with physical and cognitive disabilities, people with mental or behavioral health concerns, etc.).

Additional Information about Barnard’s Testing Program

• Barnard provides all testing for both initial and regular testing at no cost to faculty, staff or students.
• Students planning to access Columbia’s facilities at any point during the academic year:
  • Are required to participate in Barnard’s testing program.This includes students who were approved for and will be living in Columbia Housing or students planning to access Columbia University’s campus at any point during the semester.
  • Students must indicate their intentions to access Columbia’s campus in the Semester Form in the StarRez housing portal.
  • Both the entry test and regular testing are for asymptomatic students only; students with symptoms of COVID-19 or who otherwise feel sick should consult Barnard’s Primary Care Health Services (PCHS) for evaluation and possible testing. 
  • Full participation in the program, including the entry test and regular surveillance tests is required; students cannot have a single standalone test or elect to test only during select weeks.
• Those participating in the testing program will be tested on a regular basis as a means of monitoring the health of the immediate community. Currently, faculty and staff will be tested monthly. Students will be tested weekly. We will adjust the frequency of our testing based on considerations such as the infection rate both at Barnard and in New York City.
• Results: The results of our community testing are available on the College’s COVID-19 Dashboard, including aggregate information on the number of tests and the percentage of positive test results. 
• Residents of "Hot spots": Faculty and staff who live or spend time in the zip codes that NYS has just recently designated as "hot spots" are welcome to undergo asymptomatic testing as frequently as once / week through our testing program. This is an optional increase to monthly testing faculty and staff are able to participate in. Please reach out to covidtesting@barnard.edu if you are interested in more frequent testing than once a month. Also, we know that “hot spots” could change, and we are monitoring the NYS announcements daily. 
• Self-reporting: Separate from the daily attestation to enter campus, we are asking all faculty, students and staff to update the College if they have experienced symptoms of COVID-19, possibly been exposed to COVID-19, or test positive for COVID-19 via a non-Barnard test. If you are not feeling well, please notify the College via the CoVerified app. Please also stay home to quarantine or isolate. A clinician working with Barnard will be in touch to check in and advise re: next steps. If you received a “red screen” in CoVerified, even in error, you must stay away from campus until the clinician clears you. If you receive a “red screen” in the ReopenCU app, you should also report your symptoms, possible exposure, or positive test to Barnard using CoVerified and wait for our clinician to be in touch with you.  Please note that our clinician is working in partnership with Human Resources and the College's Contact Tracing team as part of a program developed by MJ Murphy, who sits on the Return to Campus Working Group, to provide information and support to any faculty or staff member who tests positive for or may have been exposed to COVID-19.
• NYS app: A New York statewide contact tracing app, “COVID Alert NY,” is now available. This does not replace Barnard’s (or Columbia’s) existing apps or procedures, but we wanted to make you aware of this additional app as an added layer in the efforts to trace and contact individuals who may have had exposure to COVID-19. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware have similar apps available that use the same technology framework.

PCR Testing: Barnard's testing protocols are built around polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which have been referred to as the “gold standard” of testing. Our entry test and regular testing are an anterior nasal collection, which uses a short, Q-tip-like swab to collect a sample just above the nostrils. Tests will be processed by the Clinical Research Sequencing Platform in partnership with the Broad Institute. The estimated turnaround time is approximately 48 hours from collection. More information can be found on this fact sheet.

This dashboard provides information on testing done as part of the testing program at Barnard. Any COVID-19 cases reported on this dashboard include positive, laboratory-verified test results reported as part of the on-campus Barnard testing program consisting of asymptomatic entry and regular testing, as well as testing conducted by Primary Care Health Service (PCHS). Confidentiality laws prohibit the College from disclosing any identifying information about any affected individuals.  

Barnard, as with all institutions of higher education in New York State, reports additional information daily to the New York State Department of Health. This includes information the College has received about any positive cases among Barnard faculty, students, and staff accessing campus. This can be viewed on the NYS DOH dashboard page.   

Questions about Barnard's testing program can be sent to covidtesting@barnard.edu.

College-Related Travel Suspended

The College currently prohibits all non-essential College-related travel until further notice.  No upcoming non-essential travel will be reimbursed during this period, unless it is approved in writing by the appropriate area Vice President, Provost or Dean of the College.

Personal Travel

All Barnard students, faculty, and staff who access campus are strongly urged to postpone any non-essential personal travel until further notice and to pay close attention to conditions in areas within and outside the US prior to travel. Any travel outside of the tri-state area will require completion of the College’s Travel Registration Form (discussed further below).

Any member of the College community who has traveled internationally will be required to quarantine for 14 days following their return and must complete that quarantine prior to returning to campus. Furthermore, New York State requires that travelers who have visited a state or territory that has “significant community spread,” must quarantine for a period of 14 days when entering New York. (The requirements do not apply to any individual passing through the affected areas for a limited duration – i.e., less than 24 hours – through the course of travel). All community members arriving in New York after traveling to an affected state or territory are required to fully comply with this order by quarantining for 14 days following their return which, for faculty and staff, could result in missed work. The current list of affected locations is posted on the New York State website.   

All Barnard students, faculty, and staff are responsible for arranging for, funding, and managing any required quarantine that results from personal travel. 

Travel Registration

All Barnard faculty, staff and students traveling outside of the tri-state area will be required to fill out our Travel Registration Form at least 72-hours prior to their anticipated return to campus and will receive instructions regarding necessary quarantine or other requirements before returning to campus or before engaging in other College-sponsored activities.

Hygiene is an important layer of safety and it is important for all members of the community to wash their hands frequently, use hand sanitizer, and to exhibit good habits related to cleaning.

• Facilities are cleaning bathrooms and high-touch spaces such as lobbies, elevators, and door handles three times per day. All other spaces are cleaned once per day. Cleaning includes disinfection as well as new procedures and products related to COVID.
• Facilities are not cleaning the interiors of offices, and will not enter office suites, unless specifically directed and authorized. 
• Hand sanitizer stations have been deployed across campus.
• Faculty and staff should use the supply form to request any cleaning supplies for offices or other areas.

Face coverings are required on campus, indoors and outdoors, including in situations where staff/faculty are physically distanced from others. The exception to this rule is where individuals are alone behind a closed door in a space that is dedicated to them, such as an office. Even in that situation, masks are still recommended unless eating or drinking. The College will provide a face mask to all students, staff and faculty on an as-needed basis. Faculty and staff should use the supply form to request any PPE for their work on campus.

Improvements have been made to the College’s ventilation systems. It is important to note that ventilation upgrades are not a stand-alone means to assure safety, but are one of the layers that work to reduce risk.

• The College hired an outside engineering consultant, CFS Facilities Management, who reviewed and assessed the air handling systems and opportunities for upgrade. 
• Improvements and upgrades include increasing the proportion of outside air delivered to the space and increasing filtration effectiveness. In some locations, additional stand-alone filtration units or ultraviolet lights have been placed.
• Windows in many locations have been made operable where they previously had been sealed shut, with the accompanying installation of proper window guards.
• Note that no matter how many improvements are made, air will generally recirculate. Therefore, it is recommended that individuals wear masks at all times, as described above.
• Staff/faculty contact Facilities at facilities@barnard.edu with specific questions and concerns related to ventilation.