While the infection rates of COVID-19 have slowed in the last year, positive test rates have increased roughly 7% in the past six months, according to the California Department of Public Health.

Cosumnes River College officials are offering methods to ensure students stay healthy.

Dean of Student Wellness and Support Services for Los Rios Community College District Victoria Flores said she advises Los Rios students to use the Interactive Decision Chart on the campus website for COVID-related questions. Flores said when students are sick, they should stay home and use the chart for directions on what they should do.

“As our general public indicates, each individual is advised to understand their own risk and make decisions based on their health,” Flores said. “Mitigation measures, such as face masks, hand soap/sanitizer and ventilation, are part of our COVID response to keep our community healthy, especially as we enter the respiratory virus season.”

The Los Rios website’s Interactive Decision Chart provides steps to take if a student has tested positive, has been exposed or has experienced COVID symptoms.

The website also has a reporting form to fill out personal information and answer questions related to when any exposure has occurred.

College Nurse Michelle Barkley said the campus vaccination requirement was lifted in the fall of 2022 when the virus had mutated.

Barkley said the vaccine protects individuals for only a little while, but not forever. At the moment, Barkley said vaccination status isn’t high on priority.

Last semester, Los Rios partnered with Sacramento County as they administered free COVID vaccines at all Los Rios Colleges’ Student Health and Wellness Centers. Barkley said if Los Rios partners with Sacramento County again, they will need to get the word out.

“When the new vaccine comes out, we encourage people to get vaccinated because it’s better to have some protection than none,” Barkley said. “There are caveats to that, however. If you have COVID, then you have to wait a little while before getting vaccinated because you should have an active immunity to it.”

Barkley said that if someone has been exposed or has tested positive and recovered, then that person should wear a mask.

Kari Nahlen, head volleyball coach and kinesiology professor, said that ever since COVID happened, there have been new regulations the volleyball team is required to work with.

“We are getting much closer to having normal volleyball regulations again,” Nahlen said.

In the previous year, there was a mandate on masking. Nahlen said there are still some recommendations to mask up and take tests, but now there is no mandate on those procedures unless students are showing symptoms.

Aside from having no crowd at games in the fall of 2021 to allowing crowds to attend games in fall of 2022, no changes had been made at sporting events, Nahlen said.

Nahlen said that because a ball is used between both teams, a lot of people were wary of getting COVID from touching the ball if someone had the virus.

The regulations stated that if anybody had COVID then people were not allowed to be around the team and the regulations still stand. On Sept. 1, the women’s volleyball team had postponed two matches because some players had COVID.

“We’ve had three people tested positive on the same day, so we were shut down for five days,” Nahlen said. “But after that, we’ve had little-to-no issues because we took precautions right away and we made sure we were separate from everybody. Those three players tested positive and others tested negative, we had to miss two games because of it.”

Visit covid.org to find how to access free test kits in your area.