With the first quarter of the 2021-22 school year coming to a close, the administration of St. Louis U. High has been hard at work deciding on its Covid plans for the second quarter, which are set to be announced in the Oct. 17 ParentConnect email.

SLUH has been successful so far at limiting student and faculty cases and quarantines, with, as of this past Tuesday, Oct. 5, only 15 students and faculty testing positive, and only 20 student close-contact quarantines having been needed.  All of this has come under the administration’s Condition III guidelines, which have been in place since school began in August. 

“I think all of our work last year has put us in a really good position to do well,” said Director of Health Scott Gilbert. “It’s been a good first quarter. We have had some Covid cases, and we have had some quarantines, and we expected to have them. We didn’t go into this saying ‘Hey, we’re going to have zero.’ We knew we were still going to have cases. But with the things that we had in place, we knew that they would probably be pretty minimal, and they were.”

Though Condition III has been evidently effective, the administration is actively considering a move to its Condition II plan for the second quarter. This new condition would still require morning temperature checks and contact tracing for positive cases, but would also see the school’s indoor mask requirement removed.  Instead, the requirement would be changed to a mask recommendation for non-vaccinated students and faculty, with the vaccinated no longer required to wear a mask in any scenario.

Per the administration’s guidelines, a move to Condition II would require a regional test positivity rate of lower than 10 percent, regional case rates of lower than 1.2 percent, single-digit monthly cases, and a student and faculty vaccination rate of above 85 percent.  As of now, three of the conditions—regional positivity rate, regional case rates, and vaccination rate—have been met. However, the past month has seen 11 positive tests in the SLUH community, surpassing the double-digit case limit, but still low enough for the administration to consider going ahead with Condition II regardless.

“I wish everything could be completely where the metrics were all indicating Condition II or Condition III, but it just isn’t,” said principal Ian Gibbons, SJ.  “And so most of the conditions that we have met would suggest Condition II. We do have one metric that would push us into Condition III, and that’s the case numbers per month, we had double-digit case numbers in September. So that’s our big question of ‘Should we be moving toward Condition II or III?’ We’ll have an answer on October 17.”

Just last week, it looked as though a possible switch could be jeopardized by a gradually inclining regional case rate and, perhaps more worryingly, six new student cases reported in the span of just a few days. However, in the last week, the regional case rate has leveled out and no further student cases have emerged.

“About a third of our 15 cases happened around a week and a half ago within a six day period, and the question of if this was a significant new trend was begging to be answered,” said Gibbons. “As it turns out, there wasn’t any link between the cases, they just so happened to all pop up at the same time. We’ve not had any further cases in the past six days, so I feel pretty good about that.”

After nearly 20 months of mask-wearing and Covid protocols, students and faculty alike are all undoubtedly suffering from  “Covid fatigue.” As with many things, opinions differ greatly, as students are forced to weigh their personal preference against public health concerns.

“I obviously hate wearing a mask, I just want to put that out there,” said junior Giuseppe Abbate. “But when you look at it, it isn’t really the worst thing that we could do. Everything is just still so uncertain, so I think it is probably just best if we keep wearing masks through at least the second quarter.”

Others viewed the situation in a different light.

“The way that (the pandemic) is right now, I think it’s time to move past mask mandates and truthfully most of the Covid protocols that we have here,” said sophomore Leo Fitzmaurice.  “Pretty much everyone who wants to be vaccinated can be vaccinated and has already been vaccinated, and if you choose not to be vaccinated then that is a risk that you are willing to take on.”

However, it is important to keep in mind that a significant risk does still linger, no matter your age or vaccination status. 

“I think all of us have kind of grown to the fact that being outside is pretty darn safe,” said Gilbert. “The weather's going to change. It’s going to get cold. And so now we're all indoors, not only here at school, but also with our sports teams, everybody in the home, families are going to be in close quarters.”

 As winter approaches, schools around the country are conflicted over how to approach their safety measures. 

“What I feel is very important is that the safety not only goes out to you guys, but it also goes out to beyond that. Certainly to the faculty and staff as well, but even beyond that. It’s looking at the safety of a student's home and family,” said Gilbert. 

Unfortunately hospitalizations are still occurring with relative frequency in the younger age groups, not only people of high school age but also people in their 20s and 30s, which the new variant seems to be hitting hard. This concerns the administration of SLUH, who has been collaborating with Wash. U., SSM, and the city health department to decide the right time to start easing guidelines off.

It seems for now, the future of masks is uncertain. The same is true for having senior advisors in Freshman homerooms, which has been a particular sore spot for the class of 2025.

 “I wish I could predict the future, but I can't,” said Gilbert. “No one can, and so we just have to play our cards and hopefully plan right.”