Campus Bulletin: Current Students, Faculty and Staff, Parents, ObieSafe

ObieSafe: COVID-19 Data Update

December 1, 2021 11:00 AM

Office of Communications

Since August 2020, Oberlin has posted data associated with the most concerning aspects of COVID-19’s presence on campus. During that time, we have become familiar with such data as case numbers and positivity rates. Now, we must look to the number of hospitalizations from COVID as the most incisive marker tracking this pandemic on campus. 

The data that adequately measures the threat of COVID on campus has evolved, just as our ability to mitigate the threat of this disease has improved. Now, with  our campus highly vaccinated, the number of cases and positivity rates of PCR tests no longer measures the threat of COVID.

Vaccines  significantly reduce the risk of serious illness, hospitalization and death. (Ohio COVID-19 Dashboard). If they stop being effective, and people end up in the hospital, new protocols will have to be enforced. That is why the hospitalization numbers from campus are far more important than case totals or positivity rates, although that data is useful as well.

That is why, beginning in December, ObieSafe will add a new number to our ongoing data dashboard—the number of people from campus hospitalized because of COVID. We hope you will use that number as an indication of the significance of COVID.

The results can be found on the campus testing statistics page.


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