USC to nix coronavirus vaccine requirement starting Fall 2023


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The University will begin wastewater surveillance in on-campus dorms for Norovirus, which causes nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. (Emma Silverstein | Daily Trojan)

The University will no longer mandate coronavirus vaccinations for students, faculty and staff beginning Fall 2023, Chief Student Health Officer Dr. Sarah Van Orman said in a briefing with the Daily Trojan Tuesday.

The change in policy comes as campus vaccination rates hit “close to 100%” for the primary vaccine series and 85% for the booster, prompting levels of immunity against severe disease, Van Orman said. 

“We still want people to get those vaccines we promote … but it becomes more of a personal healthcare decision,” Van Orman said. “We’re leaving this phase of the pandemic; we’re not going to see these huge numbers of hospitalizations and deaths that crash our healthcare system, because of the level of overall immunity.”

Advisors for the Food and Drug Administration endorsed Paxlovid Thursday as a beneficial coronavirus treatment, especially for adults at high risk for progression to severe illness, following an analysis that showed Paxlovid’s ability to significantly reduce hospitalizations and deaths in both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

“We want to give [Paxlovid] to people who are at high risk, but are having mild symptoms …  because it can prevent that progression,” Van Orman said. “We don’t want to wait for people to have severe symptoms as there are other treatments that would be recommended.”

Van Orman noted that the number of total illnesses is higher after spring break than after winter or Thanksgiving break. Besides respiratory illnesses, such as influenza, coronavirus and the common cold, Van Orman said the most common illness is acute gastroenteritis, or stomach flu.

“The one that’s probably the most common, that causes what we worry the most about because it tends to cause outbreaks is caused by the norovirus,” Van Orman said. “Norovirus is when people say they have food poisoning, meaning they wake up, they feel nauseous, and they vomit and they get diarrhea, it’s really probably a viral infection with the norovirus”

Norovirus is incredibly contagious, Van Orman said, and people are susceptible to illness even when they are only infected by a small number of virus particles. Infections require specific cleaning products to expel, hence its association with outbreaks in places such as dormitories and cruise ships, Van Orman said.

“We’re actually going to be starting to do wastewater surveillance in our on-campus dorms,” Van Orman said. “The idea behind that is to find a few cases early, so that we can notify [USC] Housing to do enhanced cleaning to try to prevent outbreaks. By the time we start hearing … a lot of people saying, ‘I got sick, I’m sick,’ it’s often a little too late.”

Most cases of acute gastroenteritis are treatable at home with oral electrolyte solutions, Van Orman said. 

Overall, Van Orman stressed the importance of self-testing as the semester resumes, whether that be for respiratory illnesses or sexually transmitted diseases.

“We actually see a fair number of people coming in post-spring break with either concerns about sexually transmitted infections, exposures or symptoms,” Van Orman said. “So [I want to] remind people, if they have had a new partner over break, or someone they may not have known as well, that they make sure they come in and get themselves tested.”