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COVID-19 Disease
Additional COVID-19 Disease
Immunization, Pandemics, and Public Health Crises
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Covid-19: the Essentials of Prevention and Treatment by UNT safety committees continue to review federal and state guidance and making recommendations for how we apply the rapidly evolving changes to our campus operations. The health and safety of our UNT community continues to be our top priority, and UNT leadership carefully reviews the latest advice from public health experts to adjust our plans accordingly. Please do not come to campus if you are feeling ill or have a fever.
Read President Smatresk’s message to the university community.
The best way to ensure your personal safety with regard to COVID-19 is to obtain a full course of vaccination. Vaccinations have been found to drastically reduce the chance of experiencing severe impacts from COVID-19 and minimize transmission of the disease.
UNT continues to urge students, faculty and staff to take one of the approved COVID-19 vaccinations currently offered.
The Student Health and Wellness Center has resumed providing COVID booster shot clinics this week. UNT students, faculty and staff and UNT System employees who need a COVID booster can register online by clicking on the link for the vaccine series they received initially. The health center will schedule registrants for future clinics based on staff availability. If you've previously had to cancel an appointment and still wish to receive a booster, please re-register. Bring proof of vaccination, including vaccine received and dates administered, to your appointment in order to receive the booster at that time. If you haven't received any COVID-19 vaccine, do not sign up on the booster registries. Learn more about initial vaccine appointments at the SHWC.
Regular hours have now resumed for BinaxNOW rapid antigen testing through the Student Health and Wellness Center. Curative Inc. PCR testing at the Union remains on a modified schedule until classes begin.
BinaxNOW testing, Chestnut Hall 120:
Curative Inc., kiosk by Goolsby Chapel:
Curative Inc., University Union 381:
Hours for the Spring semester starting January 18 (except for holidays):
After successfully completing a Mandatory Testing Program for our community in the summer of 2021, UNT began the second phase of COVID-19 testing that fall. Every two weeks, a randomized computer program will select 2,000 members of the campus community who will be notified of their selections via email. Selected individuals will have two weeks, regardless of vaccination status, to get tested at either the Student Health and Wellness Center, one of the on-campus Curative locations, or another location of their choosing. Participation is voluntary and individuals selected this spring will not be eligible for re-selection this semester.
In addition to Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson, UNT does recognize vaccinations received in other countries as long as the vaccine is on the World Health Organization (WHO) approved list. The approved vaccinations allow you to travel to and from campus without the need to quarantine. However, you must follow other CDC guidelines regarding international travel. International faculty and students who have access to an approved vaccine are encouraged to get fully vaccinated prior to traveling to the U.S.
Please see the WHO's full listing of approved vaccines globally. The list will be updated as additional vaccines are approved.
The University of North Texas System and its member institutions are committed to the well-being and safety of our students, faculty, and staff, as well as to the protection and confidentiality of our employees’ personal health information.
Supervisors should NOT ask questions intended to:
Supervisors may ask questions regarding the general well-being of their employees and ensure that all employees are following safety protocols.
Supervisors are encouraged to maintain flexibility in scheduling to allow employees to take appropriate time off of work to receive the vaccination. Employees who attend COVID-19 testing or vaccination clinics offsite may utilize their accrued sick leave for the appointment.
Employees who have specific questions regarding their medical condition(s) as it pertains to work are encouraged to contact their campus HR teams for assistance.
Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, some causing illness in people and others that circulate among animals, including camels, cats, and bats. Rarely, animal coronaviruses can infect people exposed to infected animals, and then spread among people, as has been seen with MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV, and likely now with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus is a betacoronavirus, like MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. All three of these viruses have their origins in bats. The sequences from U.S. patients are similar to the one that China initially posted, suggesting a likely single, recent emergence of this virus from an animal reservoir.
On March 11, the COVID-19 outbreak was characterized as a pandemic by the WHO.external icon
This is the first pandemic known to be caused by the emergence of a new coronavirus. In the past century, there have been four pandemics caused by the emergence of novel influenza viruses. As a result, most research and guidance around pandemics is specific to influenza, but the same premises can be applied to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Pandemics of respiratory disease follow a certain progression outlined in a “Pandemic Intervals Framework.” Pandemics begin with an investigation phase, followed by recognition, initiation, and acceleration phases. The peak of illnesses occurs at the end of the acceleration phase, which is followed by a deceleration phase, during which there is a decrease in illnesses. Different countries can be in different phases of the pandemic at any point in time and different parts of the same country can also be in different phases of a pandemic.
The complete clinical picture with regard to COVID-19 is not fully known. Reported illnesses have ranged from very mild (including some with no reported symptoms) to severe, including illness resulting in death. While information so far suggests that most COVID-19 illness is mild, a reportout of China suggests serious illness occurs in 16% of cases. Older people and people of all ages with severe chronic medical conditions — like heart disease, lung disease and diabetes, for example — seem to be at higher risk of developing serious COVID-19 illness.
Learn more about the symptoms associated with COVID-19.
Risk depends on characteristics of the virus, including how well it spreads between people; the severity of resulting illness; and the medical or other measures available to control the impact of the virus (for example, vaccines or medications that can treat the illness) and the relative success of these. In the absence of vaccine or treatment medications, nonpharmaceutical interventions become the most important response strategy. These are community interventions that can reduce the impact of disease.
The risk from COVID-19 to Americans can be broken down into risk of exposure versus risk of serious illness and death.
Early information out of China, where COVID-19 first started, shows that some people are at higher risk of getting very sick from this illness. This includes:
CDC has developed guidance to help in the risk assessment and management of people with potential exposures to COVID-19.
The Texas Department of State Health Services offers information for COVID-19 testing and current case counts for the State of Texas.
Review the article, Why outbreaks like Coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to "flatten the curve," by Washington Post journalist, Harry Stevens (2020). The articles provides interactive graphs to learn how viruses like Covid-19 spread and provides four simulations for how populations can reduce infection through different response methods over different durations of time. The simulations in the article use a fake virus that is modeled to be more infectious than Covid-19.
Stay informed on the latest developments about COVID-19. Follow advice given by your healthcare provider, your national and local public health authority or your employer on how to protect yourself and others from COVID-19.
Why? National and local authorities will have the most up to date information on whether COVID-19 is spreading in your area. They are best placed to advise on what people in your area should be doing to protect themselves.
The United States nationally is currently in the initiation phases, but states where community spread is occurring are in the acceleration phase. The duration and severity of each phase can vary depending on the characteristics of the virus and the public health response.
While the content at the links provided below was developed to prepare for, or respond to, an influenza (“flu”) pandemic, the newly emerged coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory disease that seems to be spreading much like flu. Guidance and tools developed for pandemic influenza planning and preparedness can serve as appropriate resources for health departments in the event the current COVID-19 outbreak triggers a pandemic.
Copyright © University of North Texas. Some rights reserved. Except where otherwise indicated, the content of this library guide is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. Suggested citation for citing this guide when adapting it:
This work is a derivative of "Help Yourself Campaign @ the UNT Libraries", created by and © University of North Texas, used under CC BY-NC 4.0 International.
