University of Michigan: 91% of students vaccinated against COVID-19 ahead of fall term

ANN ARBOR – With just days to go before fall classes at the University of Michigan begin, the school says 91% of students are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

President Mark Schlissel made the announcement in a letter to the school community on Wednesday. He also shared that 87% of faculty and 72% of staff on campus are fully vaccinated.

“The percentage among students makes them one of the most, if not the most, highly vaccinated populations in our state,” he wrote.

The news comes after U-M on July 30 announced a vaccine mandate across all three of its campuses and Michigan Medicine with an Aug. 30 deadline.

Schlissel sent out the letter as scores of undergraduates and their families descended upon the Ann Arbor campus for day one of Move-In Week.

Outside the school’s South and West Quadrangles, lines of cars filled the streets on Wednesday afternoon and families were seen standing with piles of items on the grass outside as they waited for oversized bins.

Students will be moving in through Friday at all residence halls on central and North Campus.

Face masks will be required inside all campus buildings at the start of the semester in order to curb the spread of the highly contagious delta variant.

In addition to universal masking, community members and guests entering any campus building will have to complete the ResponsiBLUE daily symptom checking app, wrote Schlissel.

The app will have an individual’s vaccine status listed. For those who received a medical or religious exemption from getting the vaccine, the app will indicate COVID testing compliance.

Research teams at the U-M School of Public Health and the College of Engineering will be expanding their wastewater monitoring program to track community spread of COVID-19 on and off campus, and in the Ann Arbor, Flint and Ypsilanti areas. The program was developed in partnership with the state of Michigan.

U-M regularly updates its COVID-19 data dashboard.