Well, hi, everyone. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week. Happy Friday, and welcome to this week's Fireside Chat. I'm Lisa Stearns, and I'm here with Tim Cross, our Senior Vice President.
We'll be updating you today on the latest information regarding COVID-19 cases within the university and the institute, and we'll be sharing an update on other news within the institute. So a few reminders. We all know the drill. Be sure to keep your audio muted so everyone can hear what others are saying.
Use the chat function on Zoom to ask any questions. You can publicly post those, or you can send them privately to me. Of course, a recording is always made at this session and will be posted on our UTIA coronavirus website. You can find that link on our homepage at utia.tennessee.edu.
So, Tim, the case count does appear to be decreasing rather rapidly within the university. So what does the situation look like as far as cases, and how are those being handled? Thank you, Lisa, for getting us started once again. Before I jump into some data, you know, I was sitting here as we got started this afternoon, and obviously we've done a number of these Fireside Chats.
Some of you have been involved in doing field days around the state, and you'll know that one of our traditions is often to do a dry run of our presentations, and then throughout the course of the day, we may give those presentations eight or ten times. In the old days out in Milan, Tennessee, at the Milan Ag Research and Education Center, it wasn't uncommon about halfway through a day for presenters to swap programs and for the ag economist to make the soils presentation and the soils presentation presenter to handle the ag econ material. So I'm thinking, Lisa, maybe one of these days I'm going to be the moderator, and we're going to let you be the presenter, and we'll change things up a little bit just to keep everyone on their toes. Meantime, let me jump into this week's data for everyone, and it's great to see you once again.
Thanks for joining us. Looking at the data as of a few hours ago here at the university, including both the Institute of Agriculture and UT Knoxville in total, we currently have 12 active positive cases among all employees, faculty, and staff, and currently down to 114 positive cases among students. So a huge decrease in the number of student cases, really just about the same number of employee cases overall, so no big changes there, but the big difference is a rapid and large decrease in the number of student cases. If you think about it, school really got started up in a big way about three weeks ago, and obviously over the course of that first three or four weeks, we've seen a spike in numbers, and now we're seeing numbers come down very, very significantly.
In terms of self-isolations across the whole campus and across the state, we currently have 66 employees total in self-isolation and 594 students in self-isolation. Sounds like a big number still for students, but think about the fact that last week and the week before, we were looking at more like 1,500 to 2,000 students in self-isolation. So again, a very large decrease there and looks to be very positive news. I've been watching and certainly interacting some with the cabinet.
There's some talk that maybe folks are being a little more strategic in their behavior, not reporting when they've tested positive in order to avoid self-isolation or in order to avoid any kind of requirements amongst positive cases. There may be some of that, but I have to believe not all of our students are going to behave in that manner, and our employees, we certainly don't expect to behave that way. So I really do believe we're seeing some large decreases in active cases and with the number of individuals who are in self-isolation as well. Here at the Institute of Agriculture, we currently have four active positive cases among UTIA employees, both faculty and staff, and we have a total of 10 employees in self-isolation.
Those are individuals who have either become symptomatic or who have had direct contact with someone who has been diagnosed as positive. So again, very small numbers, virtually the same numbers that we've had for the past six weeks. So that's an indication to me that you all are doing a great job, that we're going to our business in a very safe and healthy way, that we're doing the things we need to do, and that's why those numbers have been low and stayed low, and I've got a lot of confidence thanks to your hard work and your dedication that we'll keep those numbers low. Looking just briefly at the national picture, it's probably not as good as what any of us would like to see.
The seven-day average number of new cases, it's still about 40,000 cases per day. We got down to about 35,000 cases per day a couple weeks ago, but it's come back up since then. So we're still not where we want to be, obviously, but at least we're not seeing huge spikes and rapid increases either. Across Tennessee as a whole, our average is still calculates out at about 1,400 new cases per day.
It's right in line with what I've been saying the last two or three weeks, anywhere from 1,200 to 1,400 cases per day. But if you look at just the last few days, maybe there's some positive news there. In three of the last four days, we've actually had less than 1,000 cases reported. So if three of the last four days holds and continues moving forward, we'll see some decreases overall in Tennessee as well.
And I really feel like we've done our part in demonstrating what can be done to manage the number of cases that we have to deal with to reduce the spread of the virus, and it's thanks to your good work, I think, that both the university and the state overall is in as good a shape as it is. So that's my take on our data for this week, Lisa. Well, it does sound pretty positive. Another big negative, the flu season is just about upon us, and we have been having some questions about the flu vaccine.
So any news that you can share with us on that? Yeah, great. And that's good timing, too. I know we've had questions about the flu vaccine at several of our chats, and I get asked questions by others as I go about my work.
But just today, we do finally have some specific guidance about getting flu shots this fall. And I think to give you a different face and a different voice to share information, I'd like to call on our human resources officer, Mr. Doug Bonner, if you would, to share with us the plans that we're going to be following across the entire UT system for flu vaccination. So, Doug, would you like to share with us what was just announced today?
Sure thing, Dr. Cross. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.
So I guess to start, I just want to remind everyone that as Dr. Cross has shared on previous fireside chats, the decision has been made really across the entire UT system that all faculty and staff will be required to receive a flu vaccination this year. I don't think that's new news to anyone. And the rationale behind that, again, for those of you that haven't already heard it, is to reduce the risk of contracting the flu in combination with COVID-19, but also to reduce the possibility of flu-like symptoms either being mistaken for or masking COVID-19.
If someone does have COVID-19, they want to make sure that that is easily identifiable and they can receive the treatment that they need. The other question that we received early on was around any exemptions that may be available for people as it relates to the flu shot. So I want to remind everyone again that the exemptions are going to be permitted for anyone with a medical or a faith-based reason for not choosing to receive a flu vaccine this year. So now the new news is that over the course of the past couple of weeks, we've been looking at what are our options to track individual employee compliance to make sure that people are following through and getting the flu shot.
And we've been working on a solution that's based in Iris, in employee self-service, and that functionality has gone live now. And many of you, if you've been in your email today, have probably already received an email about that, but I want to talk it through just real quickly and share the process and make sure everyone recognizes how simple it is. So really all employees are going to need to do is log into Iris Web's portal like you normally would, select the employee self-service icon, from there you're going to choose employee information, and then the vaccine verification form. And I know when I say that out loud, it seems like a lot of steps, but it really is quite simple.
I've logged in myself to get there, and it's a fairly intuitive process once you're in the system. There are two options available for all of our employees to choose from. One is that they acknowledge that they've received a flu shot, and that is followed by a prompt to enter the date on which the shot occurred. And the other is a choice to opt out entirely from vaccines.
Neither one of these options is going to require any additional information or any additional documentation. Once you choose your option, you click Submit, and that's all there is to the process. For those of you that do want to get some training on how to do this, there's a couple of options available. You can log in to Kate.
There's a job aid that's available in there. It'll take you about a minute and a half to read through the whole thing. You'll get about half an hour of training credit. So you may want to explore that option.
But like I said, if you log into employee self-service, it's a relatively intuitive process. And of course, if you have any questions at all, you're always welcome to call me or the HR partner for your unit. We'll be happy to assist you in any way we can. Like I said, the most important thing is for people to remember, it's a relatively simple process.
It'll only take a couple of minutes to do it. Whether you receive a shot or you choose to opt out, it is important that all of our employees go into the system one way or the other and choose one of those two options this year. Chuck, we already have a question related to that, so I'm going to ask you. Sure.
The question is, how will an employee without a computer or someone who uses one at work and doesn't have access at this point or smart phone access access this IRIS self-service form? What I'm going to recommend at this point is that they work with their leader to share that information with their leader and then make sure that is reported to their human resources partner. And then we'll partner with the IRIS team to make sure that information gets uploaded. Okay.
And another question related to this. This person says that their doctor recommended that they wait to get the flu shot until at least mid-October. So what is the time frame that we have to report or receive the shot? There is not a deadline for when the attestations occur in the system.
I think, you know, I'm not a medical doctor and I'm certainly not going to override the advice that a person's or a personal physician shares with them. I think, and I believe Dr. Cross has said this on a number of the fireside chats as well, there could very well be some logical waiting until sometime in October because then that extends the period of time that the vaccine may cover you into the cooler months as we get into, you know, the new year. So I would say whenever that occurs or whenever that person does receive the shot, at that point, they just need to go into the system and enter the out-of station.
Okay, great. Thank you, Doug. So Tim, we talked last week about progress related to our new facilities on campus. However, we're doing a lot more work online these days.
So what can you share about our UTIA online presence? That's a good question, Lisa. You know, it occurred to me after our discussion last week that we talked quite a little bit about facilities and buildings and a new surge building, a new science building coming online. And yet most of us are working remotely and we're using online tools to do that.
And even our institute presence is largely online now. So I do think taking a moment to get an update on where we're at with regard to our online presence is in these times as important or maybe even more important than some of our physical facilities changes. We've been, I think, as everyone knows, switching from our SharePoint website platform to a WordPress platform. And it's been really moving forward based on incredibly hard work from our IT staff, working with our marketing and communication staff.
And I think, again, to get another face and another voice with the group today, I'd like to ask Angela Gibson to give us an update on how that WordPress project is coming along. And Lisa, you and your team are part of this too, so you chime in as well. Angela? Thank you, Dr.
Cross. So we started working on the WordPress project a few years ago because, like you mentioned, we needed to replace our SharePoint externally-facing websites. We chose WordPress because it was easy to use, it was visually appealing, and it allowed us to create consistent templates, consistent template design for our UTI branding. Many people may not be aware that the Institute has over 300 websites in our inventory.
Over the past several months, ITS and marketing communications, we have launched 45 sites. Our big launch was on March 5th and it included our Institute site, our Institute News, top-level extension, top-level Harvard College, and ag research. And that was a really heavy lift. And we had a lot of help from a lot of people, not just ITS staff and marketing communications staff, but content owners and managers, as well as our Institute Web Advisory Committee.
So just one small note, when we released our new website for the Institute, our web address changed from ag.tennesse.edu to utia.tennesse.edu. So just in case you haven't bookmarked that, go to the utia.tennesse.edu. Sorry. So since our initial launch today, we've launched 39 more sites and we have many more to go.
Like I said, we have over 300 in our inventory. For October to December of this year, we are going to, we plan to launch 15 more sites. And the majority of those will be extension county sites. We've been working with the extension IT trainers to assist them and training county staff.
And as always, the extension IT trainers are doing a great job and a lot of training, a lot of communications and back and forth with us as well as a lot of scheduling with the county staff. And so for 2021 and 2022, we'll still have 200 sites to move to WordPress and we expect a few of those sites to be retired. So I just want you to know that we are, we've been reaching out to content owners and we will continue to reach out to content owners to schedule the sites that we know about and discuss whether or not everything needs to be migrated or content needs to be upgraded or the site needs to be retired. So our focus for WordPress is really trying to modernize the look and feel of our websites as well as ensuring ADA compliance and having best practices in place, refreshing the content and creating efficiencies where we can.
And I'd just like to thank everybody that's been involved in this project. It's been very complex with a lot of moving parts and a lot of moving targets. So I think we have a web presence that's very beautiful and stylish and we can all be proud of. Well, thanks, Angela.
Anything to add to that, Lisa? Just echoing Angela's comments that it's been a heavy lift but it's been well worth it and I think it has helped to bring us into a new era here. One thing that I would also mention is that we're releasing several new sites about every Thursday, I believe it is. So there's just constant work ongoing and as you heard Angela say, there are 200 more sites that have yet to be launching it.
It's going to take a while but it's well worth it. That's good. Really glad to see the refreshed look, I think much more elegant interface and I've heard from several of our website content owners that they feel like it's really pretty easy now to maintain that content whereas SharePoint probably was not so easy. Have you all been getting any feedback from our website owners?
I think the same thing is that the ease of use and the ease of maintaining is a lot more intuitively obvious what to do. Good, so for the 250 of you that don't yet have your new websites, they're coming. in and they're gonna be great uh i know that and the good news is i think it'll be much easier and much less time consuming people up to date relevant put the new information in new events new activities uh and so forth so i really think uh you know again in this day and time where people are not out roaming around to get information they're they're online that's where they're getting information from so our presence and our appearance online is even more critical than ever so thanks a lot to angela gibson who if you haven't met her is our chief information officer uh and obviously everyone knows uh lisa stern's our vice chancellor for marketing communications thanks both you your teams and and for all the staff that have been working on getting us up and running with a refreshed new look for our online presence good any questions uh that we've had today lisa well we've had one more related to flu so doug might not stand right here uh the question is will we have a date on campus where flu vaccines are available you know we actually talked about that uh at our executive committee meeting and uh we concluded it's probably much more efficient and much easier by and large for folks to use their own sources and actually somebody pointed out you can run over here to publics and get a flu vaccine and they'll give you a 10 gift card for coming by so it might even be more profitable to do it on your own i think that the university of pennsy knoxville may have one or two public type wide open events that anyone is welcome to the challenge right now of course in the middle of this pandemic is having a large group event uh because even though we're talking about getting a vaccination that would require a lot of people to be close in close proximity i do believe the college of veterinary medicine may be planning to have uh one of their vaccination events or perhaps two but uh as we talked about expanding that to possibly serve the whole institute the number of people that we uh have to plan for in the size of the spaces that we have plus the availability of staff from the health student health center uh it really just didn't come together we'll be honest and so we concluded our best option across the whole state is to go to your doctor go to your county health department go to your pharmacy uh or go to some community event locally uh and get those flu shots where they've already made all the uh arrangements and plans to do so uh safely uh and uh with uh with all the proper protections in place sounds good well it looks like we have no other questions so tim do you have any final remarks well of course i always want to get the last word in right my final remarks today probably pretty similar to many of the last several weeks you know uh it's clear to me uh our guidance is working well and and everyone is following that guidance so i don't want to repeat every bit of that but i do want to thank everyone for uh being willing to uh take the steps necessary uh to protect themselves but also to serve as positive examples to others and i think we're doing that across the state so thank you very much i continue to get positive feedback about your work in classrooms labs clinics communities uh the work you're doing continues to be recognized and appreciated and we are making uh i think very good progress we're we're clearly uh not in the clear and not going to be anytime soon but uh we figured out how to get our jobs done and uh we just need to continue doing those jobs doing well uh and carrying on uh as as we have been i want to put in a couple of plugs here one dr bob hayes is retiring i went up to his uh uh brief celebration event on wednesday this week it's it's gonna be different without dr hayes out of the west Tennessee research education center but as i mentioned uh last week the week before dr scott will step in there and we know he'll follow and do a great job uh after bob's retirement we also have another faculty member retiring dr dwight lovday will be retiring soon and for those of you that have an interest there's actually uh an online retirement event for dr lovday later on this afternoon i believe that starts at three o'clock so if you haven't got that information uh shoot us a note we can get you a link for that but everyone is welcome i know many of you know dr lovday he's uh been a critical part of our food science program for 4-h programs he's helped a lot for our animal science program so just a great uh faculty member for many years jumping on his zoom celebration if you can uh and with that i think uh we've about come to the end of another fireside chat so i'm gonna say thank you uh thanks for all your work have a great weekend but make plans now to join us for next week's fireside chat i won't spill the beans yet but we got a special guest i don't think you'll want to miss so uh plan to join us next friday and we'll have a little different uh set of information for you in addition to all the data that we normally share and uh meantime i hope everybody uh plans to watch the game this weekend we'll see uh how our first uh football game goes against the university of missouri saturday night so thank you uh for leading us through once again lisa and have a good weekend yes and just a quick note that uh dr lovday is zooming this next friday so oh i got the friday i'm sorry no one was on there and didn't see him so yep sorry dr lovday but that's good we all got another week to get ready so we can all definitely participate in that there you go thanks everyone have a great weekend you