Ohio State University president addresses vaccinations, COVID ahead of fall semester

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX) — While some universities and colleges are requiring students to get the COVID-19 vaccine before school starts, that's not the case right now at the Ohio State University.

Classes begin on August 24 and Ohio State University President Kristina Johnson says most students will be vaccinated.

Right now, the university is only requiring students, staff and faculty to report their vaccination status.

"The reason we're doing it, we don't use the information or communicate the information, but it will help us know if there is an outbreak. Then we will be able to understand how that relates to the population of unvaccinated individuals," said Johnson.

And what about those who don't report their status?

"It's not mandatory," she said. "We're requiring it, but there's no penalty if you don't report."

Right now we are not mandating the vaccination and a part of that is because we've achieved the 75 percent without mandates. And it's also because it's still under emergency use authorization.

Students who are not vaccinated will be required to get weekly COVID-19 tests.

And masks are not mandated at this time, but that could change.

"We're going to continue to look at that and I know right now it's being recommended heavily by the CDC and of course yesterday the president is mandating it for federal employees, so we're going to watch that," she said.

Johnson believes with the success the school had last year, keeping the positivity rate low, students can do the same or even better.

" We've had very high compliance. You know, when we asked the community to come together and help, they do. I'm confident, we've already gotten a lot of people self-reporting," she said.

"We really want them to get an A, so we want to be above 90 percent if we can".