COVID-19 Vaccines
December 21, 2020 10:10 AM

Dear faculty, staff and students,

As you have likely heard, the first COVID-19 vaccine shipment has arrived in our community. The Illinois Department of Public Health is coordinating with the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District (CUPHD) to distribute the vaccines. CUPHD has told us that the university will likely receive its first allotment within the coming week. For more information, visit the CUPHD vaccination website here.   

Following guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we have plans in place for how the vaccines allotted to our campus will be offered and who will receive them first. Based on the CDC guidelines, our first community members to receive them will be healthcare workers. The university will then work through subsequent groups based on priority criteria.

CUPHD does not anticipate the vaccine being widely available until spring. If you are an employee, your unit will be contacted when you are eligible to receive a vaccine. Your unit will then communicate with you directly. If you are a student, you will be contacted by McKinley Health Center when you are eligible to receive a vaccine. Until then, please be patient while we work with CUPHD to offer the vaccine to as many people in our university community as we are able.

As we learn more information about COVID-19 federal, state and county vaccine plans, we will update the campus community as soon as we are able. Please continue to check the university COVID-19 vaccination page for the most updated information.

The distribution of a vaccine is welcome news, but we must still continue to be diligent as ever in safety precautions during the upcoming holiday season, including regular COVID-19 testing. Thank you in advance for your understanding and patience as we work through this next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sincerely,

Robert J. Jones
Chancellor