Just a few months after eliminating all campus masking requirements, Delta College changed course in a campus-wide email that alerted students and faculty to a new mask mandate in the DeRicco building, following guidance from Cal/OSHA and the California Department of Public Health.
This mandate is the first of its kind since Delta ended all indoor masking requirements at the start of the Fall semester.
The mandate began on Nov. 18 and will be enforced until Dec. 2.
Delta will continue to monitor the situation and “inform the community” if a decision is made to extend the mask mandate past this original cutoff date, according to the email.
According to Delta’s own reporting dashboard of on-campus exposures to COVID-19, the DeRicco building saw a spike in reported cases between Nov. 14 and Nov. 17.
A total of five positive cases have been reported in the DeRicco building over the span of three days. The last positive cases to be reported in DeRicco occurred nearly two weeks prior, with two cases being reported on Nov. 2. Before those two, a positive case had not been reported in the DeRicco building since Oct. 17.
The dashboard is accessible to the public and can be found at deltacollege.edu/coronavirus/campus-ready/covid-19-mandate-dashboards
Assembly Bill 685, which was passed in January 2021 and is effective until January 2023, requires all public institutions to report positive cases on campus if the infected individual was on campus during the infectious period of the illness.
The Locke Lounge Testing Center is open for students and staff who want to get tested from Monday to Thursday between 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Delta College Health Center also offers vaccinations in the Locke Building between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
