The University of Minnesota announced it will require the COVID vaccine for students if the vaccine is Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved. As long as the plan to mandate the vaccine is approved by the Board, the university has said it will offer some exemptions, the email from University of Minnesota President Joan Gabel said. The vaccine will not be required for faculty or staff.
The University of Minnesota had recently come under fire for failing to mandate the COVID vaccine. As reported by The Minnesota Sun, several faculty authored a letter to the university, asking that the school mandates the vaccine. The letter was signed by over 500 alumni, faculty, staff, and students.
The rule will go into effect as soon as the Food and Drug Administration approves the vaccine. It is expected that approval will be given for the Pfizer vaccine as well as the BioNTech vaccine in the coming weeks.
While faculty members will not be required to be vaccinated, it is strongly encouraged. Those who are not vaccinated will be required to have regular testing for COVID. Gabel said in her email that, “This will allow us the best chance to have normal campus activity this fall and uninterrupted in-person, on-campus instruction.”
She wrote, “We understand that this is a challenging decision for our community, but our interests are first and foremost the health of our students, staff, and faculty.”
As reported by The Sun, the university chose not to mandate vaccines before now because it “ would be difficult to enforce because of an immunization law in Minnesota that allows for religious and contentious exemptions. They also worry a mandate could be ‘legally problematic’ because the vaccines have only been authorized for emergency use and do not have FDA approval yet.”
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Hayley Tschetter is a reporter with The Minnesota Sun | Star News Network. Follow Hayley on Twitter or like her Facebook page. Send news tips to [email protected].
Photo “University of Minnesota” by AlexiusHoratius. CC BY-SA 3.0.
