COVID-19 cases have been steadily decreasing. Earlier this year, Governor Newsom terminated the state’s COVID-19 state emergency, and a public health order effective March 13 replaced all prior health orders. As the height of the pandemic lasted over two years, faculty and students reflected on the aftermath and the current state of COVID-19 at Archer and beyond.

There are currently zero cases of coronavirus at Archer. According to Nurse Reed McNab, earlier this fall, many Archer students and faculty were sick due to RSV and the flu, but there wasn’t a spike in COVID-19.

It is currently mandatory across the school to be vaccinated against COVID-19, but McNab said starting in fall 2023, any COVID- vaccine will no longer be a requirement for students and faculty. Throughout Archer’s many changing precautions against COVID-19, they have always followed state and county protocols.

McNab said she was pleasantly surprised that after winter break, there wasn’t an increase in cases at Archer.

“We did not have a spike after winter break, which I was very much anticipating,” McNab said. “Actually, countywide, there wasn’t a spike after winter break at schools.”

This has been McNab’s first year working at Archer, so she has experienced new responsibilities that come with being a school nurse when handling COVID-19.

“All the COVID things that we have to do that do take up a lot of time, so the contact tracing, just keeping abreast of the very rapidly changing rules and guidelines for schools that come from this county around COVID,” McNab said.

Associate Head for Finance and Operations Jane Davis reflected on these past two years and how dealing with COVID-19 looks different now than it did a year ago.

“It was very labor-intensive in the beginning because we didn’t have protocols,” Davis said. “Once we put all the protocols in place, and we became a well-oiled machine, for lack of a better description. Now, we know exactly what to do.”

Freshman Sara Salehi hopes that as the country slowly starts to move away from the pandemic, students still receive updates to the current status of COVID-19 on campus.  She wants these announcements to be regarding masking protocols and other COVID-19-related updates.

“It would be nice to know more about how COVID is now,” Salehi said. “I feel like more during the height of the pandemic, Archer talked about it a lot more during meetings. We had more current news on it. Now I really don’t know whats going on with it.”

Davis said it was also difficult in the beginning of COVID-19 to stay on top of the county’s protocols when they were constantly changing, but now it is much easier to keep Archer’s rules surrounding COVID-19 up-to-date because the county changes them less. Davis also thinks that in the future, due to an immense drop in cases  this year, California’s guidelines will continue becoming less restrictive.

“The guidance from L.A. County Department of Public Health was constantly changing at one time,” Davis said. “Now it is more static.”