In an email to students staying in university housing Thursday morning, USC Housing said the reusable face coverings will arrive after April 10. For the next two days, USC will distribute one disposable face mask per day to each student resident.
Students living in private off-campus residences near campus may request face coverings by contacting housing@usc.edu.
Garcetti also required all residents to wear a face covering when visiting essential businesses such as grocery stores, pharmacies, hardware stores, coin-operated laundry services, restaurants, hotels, taxis and ride-hail vehicles.
USC will provide face coverings for students remaining in university housing and essential employees on campus, university officials said in an email Tuesday.
To combat the spread of COVID-19, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently changed its guidance on the use of face coverings in public spaces and recommended people wear cloth face coverings in public settings. Surgical face masks and N95 face masks should still be reserved for health care workers.
“In order to support this recommendation, USC is procuring face coverings for students residing on campus and essential employees working on campus for their personal use, ” USC Chief Health Officer Sarah Van Orman and Deona Wiles, director of Office of Environmental Health and Safety, wrote in an email to USC essential employees and on-campus students. “Distribution points will be designated on campus as supplies are received.”
In a press briefing via Zoom Tuesday, Van Orman said she anticipated the face coverings that USC procured would arrive this week.
“Once they are available, we have enough to distribute to students that are residing on campus as well as essential employees,” she said. “They certainly don’t have to use the ones we provide. We want everyone to use one. We just want to make sure people have access to some face coverings.”
There are over 1,000 USC students still living in university housing.
The email emphasized that wearing a face covering does not substitute the requirements of proper personal hygiene and social distancing.
There’s a difference between a face covering and a face mask. Van Orman emphasized in the press briefing and her email that surgical face masks and N95 face masks are important supplies for frontline health care providers and first responders.
“It is critically important to keep these items directed to our health care environment as we encounter a prolonged period of equipment shortage and expected surge in cases in the region,” she wrote.
USC has provided surgical masks or face masks to health care workers and the Department of Public Safety staff, according to Van Orman. She added that the university will provide face coverings for people who are not first responders.
“The addition of a cloth face covering (cloth mask, scarf, bandanna) may help reduce the spread of potentially infectious droplets within the community when combined with these other measures,” Van Orman wrote. “USC employees working on campus and USC students residing on campus are asked to adopt this practice when present in public areas of campus, in addition to the previously established social distancing and hand hygiene practice.”
Van Orman said a challenge for the face covering is that there has been no scientific or rigorous evaluation of its effectiveness; thus, public health officials still ask people to maintain social distancing and washing their hands.
Wiles said on March 31 that her department, Office of Environmental Health and Safety, has been working with essential USC staff members, who continue to be on campus for keeping the university operation, to determine risk evaluations and strategizes ways of enhancing social distancing based on their work process and job descriptions.
The Tuesday email included a guide sheet that explains different levels of risk with the appropriate safety measures and a cloth face-covering guide, both provided by EHS.
According to the EHS guide, it’s important for people to wash their hands after they put on or remove their face covering. People should also wash their cloth face covering at least daily, ideally after each use.
Van Orman said if people are not using their face covering properly, it could become a source of infection.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Monday evening that any LA County resident who has symptoms can apply to be tested for COVID-19. The testing availability previously was strictly limited to residents of Los Angeles who were in the most high-risk categories and most vulnerable.
Since March 16, USC Student Health has been providing testing availability to people who have symptoms. Van Orman said Tuesday that USC Student Health will continue its testing guideline and acknowledged the change announced by Garcetti was a “very positive step forward.”
“If we look at the countries that have been effective in controlling [COVID-19], they’ve done a lot of things, including the social distancing and the stay-at-home, but they’ve also had widespread testing available, so people could be easily tested and [public health officials] could know who was infected. They can take measures to stop the spread,” she said.
On March 31, Van Orman said that 12% of testing results for COVID-19 were positive at USC Student Health. On April 3, the number dropped to 11%. On Tuesday, the number is 10.8% and nearly 300 people have tested at USC Student Health, she said. That means about 30 people tested positive.
The numbers are slowing down because people are following social distancing guidance, according to Van Orman.
In an email sent to the USC community Wednesday, Senior Vice president of Human Resources Felicia Washington said non-healthcare essential workers will receive an email directly from EH&S about distribution and pick-up of non-medical grade face coverings.
“If you do not receive an email by the end of the week and believe this to be an error, please contact your HR Partner,” she wrote. “Keck Medicine requires all employees who remain on site to wear a mask when within a clinical space or when social distancing cannot be performed.”
Washington also announced that for employees who can not work from home or whose normal work hours have been reduced, the university extended the period of COVID-19 administrative full paid leave through the end of the semester, May 13, 2020.
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