Health updates for fall semester

With another record enrollment and fully reopened campuses for the first time since fall 2019, we are off to a fantastic start for the school year! Our campuses are once again buzzing with teaching, research, scholarship, and the full range of university activities. 

We continue to monitor COVID as it remains a part of our lives. The community COVID risk levels for Fairfax, Prince William, and Arlington counties remains low, although both the region and Mason have seen an increase in cases in recent weeks. Our positivity rate among students is below 3%. 

We have established a number of strategies to help keep you safe and healthy, and I encourage all Patriots to utilize all of them.  

Mason offers COVID testing, the latest vaccines, and bivalent boosters on campus, and we strongly encourage masking indoors and staying home when you are unwell. Also, as we manage our defenses against COVID, Mason is providing resources for two other illnesses that we want to keep at bay, the seasonal flu and monkeypox. 

Here are specific resources available to Mason students, faculty, and staff. Please take advantage of them as you need to. 

COVID testing 

Walk-in COVID testing remains available for asymptomatic individuals for screening purposes at our various surveillance testing sites at SciTech, Mason Square (formerly known as Arlington Campus), and Fairfax campus. Diagnostic testing for symptomatic individuals can be scheduled through Student Health Services or Employee Health and Well Being. 

COVID vaccinations and boosters 

The Employee Health & Well-Being Vaccination and Testing Center in Fenwick A on the Fairfax Campus is offering both Pfizer and Moderna two-dose vaccines and one-dose bivalent boosters, and the Novavax two-dose vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued COVID guidance for what it means to be up to date. To schedule an appointment for a COVID vaccine or booster, and to learn about vaccine eligibility click here. 

Monkeypox vaccinations 

Mason is also the only university in the commonwealth offering monkeypox vaccine. More information on eligibility and scheduling can also be found here. 

Flu shots 

Winter Wellness Flu Shot Clinics will be held at Mason Square (formerly Arlington Campus) on Oct. 11, SciTech on Oct. 18, and Fairfax on Oct. 20. Learn more and register. 

Thank you, Patriots, for doing your part to protect yourselves and each other.