Newly shared data from the University of Kentucky shows that more than half of UK employees and students have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

UK president Eli Capilouto announced the milestone in an email to the campus community on Friday, April 9. According to the email, UK will also offer vaccinations to 21,000 prospective students and their families – even if the students choose not to attend UK.

“Many of these students – more than 5,000 – will enroll at UK this fall. Their vaccinations will make their homes and our campus safer, too,” Capilouto said.

As of April 8, UK had administered 200,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the four months since receiving its first shipment for healthcare workers and three months since the opening of a mass vaccine clinic at Kroger Field.

Capilouto said 93 percent of UK HealthCare workers have been vaccinated, which accounts for 10,000 people and includes students in healthcare colleges at the university.

There are 19,000 faculty and staff outside of healthcare colleges, the email said, and 78 percent and faculty and 64 percent of staff have been fully vaccinated.

A further 2% of faculty and 6% of staff are in the process of or planning to be vaccinated, bringing the totals to 80% and 70% vaccination rates for faculty and staff, respectively.

UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said that as of Wednesday, April 7, 57% of UK students have been vaccinated as well.

UK students in healthcare colleges and students employed by the university were eligible for the vaccine through Kroger Field as early as February.

As eligibility expanded in March, UK began inviting all students to be vaccinated. An additional 14,000 students outside of healthcare colleges and campus employment have been vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the email.

The numbers shared by Capilouto show that at least 28% of the doses given by UK have gone to UK affiliates.

Because the Kroger Field site distributes the Pfizer vaccine, two doses are required to vaccinate one person.

With 14,000 students fully vaccinated, that equates to at least 28,000 doses given to students – 14% of UK’s 200,000 doses.

A couple more thousand doses have been given to students not yet fully vaccinated, so the 28,000 doses given to students are a minimum.

Similarly, more than 10,000 UKHC personnel – including UK faculty, staff and students in healthcare colleges – have been fully vaccinated. 10,000 people x 2 doses = 20,000 doses given to UKHC workers, or 10% of UK’s total doses.

The numbers for faculty and staff are less clear because the population is grouped together but vaccination rate split. Of the 19,000 faculty and staff, 78% of faculty are fully vaccinated but only 64% of staff. Using 64% as a baseline, we can multiply the rate by the population (.64 x 19,000) to conclude that at least 12,160 UK campus employees are fully vaccinated.

At two doses a person, that equals another 24,320 doses given to UK affiliates – meaning that a minimum 6% of UK’s doses have gone to campus employees.

Together, those three populations account for 28% of the total doses given to UK, meaning that current vaccine operations have roughly a 30-70 ratio of doses given to UK affiliates compared to doses given to the general public.

The true percentage of doses given to UK affiliates is higher than 28% because of people halfway who have received only their first dose. Using minimal percentages, that population is at least 2,000 students and staff, bringing the percentage up another 1%.

But the cumulative total is unable to be extrapolated based on the provided data because of the sorting of faculty and staff. 

With more than half of the student body vaccinated and the freshman class invited to be inoculated, UK is one of the colleges best positioned to reopen normally in the fall.

“I don’t know of another campus that has taken this step, but the fact is this: every person who is vaccinated makes our community – and other communities in Kentucky and around the world – safer,” Capilouto said of inviting the 21,000 admitted students to be vaccinated.

In the first week of April, multiple universities – including Duke, Notre Dame and Cornell – have announced they will require students to be vaccinated in order to attend in the fall.

A bill passed in Kentucky’s legislature allowing for exemptions from mandatory vaccinations makes it unlikely that UK makes a similar decision, although UK and most universities require a bevy of other inoculations before allowing students to live on campus.

Blanton said mandatory vaccines are not being discussed by UK at this time.

“We are pleased with the response of our community. We will of course continue to monitor and always seek to do what is in the best interests of health and safety for everyone at UK,” Blanton said.

In April, UK also started offering the one dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine to students at the same location as two COVID-19 testing sites on campus. Blanton said students have been responsive to the one shot option so far.

“We’re starting slowly and we’ll ramp up, we hope over the next several days or week,” Blanton said. 420 students were vaccinated in the first two days the Johnson and Johnson vaccine was offered, a number Blanton expects to increase.

COVID-19 cases among UK students have been much lower in the spring semester than the fall, the first in person semester since the pandemic began. Blanton said there is no doubt that vaccinations are playing a role in keeping student cases low.

“So much of our campus community has been vaccinated, I think that’s had an impact,” Blanton said. “I think much of our campus community also is pretty attuned to how to stay safe and healthy.”

UK will continue to offer vaccines to UK students and all Kentucky adults. Blanton said the Kroger Field site has hundreds of open appointments in the next few weeks.

“We’ve got the supply, we’ve got the logistics and we’ve got the space to vaccinate a lot more people, so it is really important for our campus community and for the broader community to take advantage of this opportunity,” Blanton said.

He added that many other vaccine sites in Lexington also have openings, so now is a good time for residents to take advantage of vaccine offerings from the health department and state sites like at Kentucky Horse Park.

Scientists are hesitant to set a level of immunization against COVID-19 that would secure “herd immunity,” but each shot makes a difference.

“That’s 200,000 steps – some small, some large, all important – toward returning to more normal operations and the lives we long to share with loved ones, friends and families,” Capilouto said.