Drinking water fountains and bottle-filling stations are reopening
Starting mid-August 2021, the Facilities team will begin to proceed with un-bagging and flushing all the drinking water fountains and bottle-filling stations across the UBC Vancouver campus. Flushing the water will remove any stagnant water from the building’s pipe network system to ensure the water is kept fresh and the stations are ready for use.
Heat Stress Awareness course available
The Heat Stress Awareness course is recommended for all workers that are at risk of heat exposure, and for their supervisors to complete. The course was developed to increase your awareness of the risk factors and associated heat disorders related to heat stress. The course will also identify controls to protect yourself against heat stress.
VCH vaccination site at Pharmaceutical Sciences Building is closing on July 30
On Tuesday, July 27, 2021, the provincial government announced the Vax for BC campaign, announcing that “the Province will gradually refocus its vaccine efforts from mass clinics onto programs targeting the hardest to reach people. In the weeks ahead, B.C.’s vaccine strategy will shift toward more local public health clinics, community outreach efforts, mobile programs and pop-up clinics”.
Air quality health & safety awareness
In light of the recent wildfire in BC, more information about wildfire smoke health & safety has been added to the Emergency Preparedness website and the Occupational Hygiene section on the SRS website.
UBC’s HVAC teams are making sure we can breathe easy
Over the past 18 months, learning, research, and work at UBC have been taking place remotely, wherever possible. But one group of people has diligently stayed on campus to keep its infrastructure humming through all this time: the teams responsible for ensuring that heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems are functioning properly across the university.
UBC community supports COVID-19 research with rapid antigen testing clinic
The pilot project—the first of its kind at a Canadian university—ran from February to April, and helped identify positive cases of the virus in asymptomatic individuals who were quickly moved into isolation. Now, it has expanded into a clinical trial of the SARS-CoV-2 Rapid Antigen Test developed by Roche, and is open to anyone living or working at UBC until August 20.
New COVID-19 Return to Campus Guidelines released
On July 5, 2021, the BC Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training released the new COVID-19 Return-to-Campus Guidelines, effective immediately.
The Centre for Occupational Health, Safety & Wellbeing reopens its doors
The Centre in the University Services Building (USB) reopened its doors for individual exercise as of Monday, July 5th, 2021. To request access to The Centre, please submit an access form and adhere to some important protocols to keep our community safe.
Updated UBC COVID-19 Safety Framework
With the recent announcement of Public Health moving to Step 3 of BC’s Restart Plan and as mentioned in the UBC Bulletin on June 28— Supporting our return to Campus, UBC has aligned our safety planning process with the BC Restart Plan.