2019-2020 President's Annual Report

COVID-19 Updates : Inst i tut ional Response

As COVID-19 rapidly unfolded, Texas College employed a multitude of notification efforts to provide students, faculty and staff with timely updates to best ensure their safety. Utilizing varied avenues of communication (e.g. emails, website postings), Texas College, to date, has successfully navigated COVID-19 with zero positive cases on campus. The following are notification samples.

Texas College continues to closely monitor the ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. As the College continues to navigate these unprecedented times, the health and safety of students, faculty, and staff remains the College's top priority. In doing so, planning efforts solely surround providing the safest environment most conducive for education. Though situated in East Texas, Texas College's student population draws from across the globe. With consideration to this, the College employs a thorough utilization of data provided from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), and the Northeast Texas Public Health District (NET Health) to ensure a comprehensive assessment. As updates occur, the latest information will be posted to this page to best keep the Texas College community informed.

Though part of the large coronavirus family commonly found in a variety of animals, as well as humans and cause the common cold, COVID-19 has emerged as a more severe respiratory illness able to spread from person to person. The heightened severity accompanied with the virus' contagious nature has presented itself as a concern on an international scale. First identified in late 2019 amid an outbreak investigation in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, COVID-19 has spread rapidly across the globe, with the United States’ first case confirmed on January 21, 2020, in the state of Washington. On March 11, 2020, less than two months following the initial U.S. infection, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO. As COVID-19 continued infiltration across the world, the virus congruently swept the U.S., yielding a tremendous spike in confirmed cases. The influx of cases throughout the nation called for stay at home orders to best assist with flattening the curve, or slowing the spread. As the curve began to flatten, orders eased and the nation began to reopen. However, the attempt to return to normalcy would initiate a second surge in positive cases in June, which remains of concern today.

31 2019- 2020 Pres i dent ’ s Annual Report