Dear faculty, staff and students,

We are writing to provide an update on the status of campus vaccination efforts and how you may access further information as vaccination phase eligibility expands across the city and state.

Status

Higher education: The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) announced that higher education staff will become eligible for vaccination beginning today, March 22.

Explore Your Options

As COVID-19 vaccine continues broad roll-out across the country, employees and students may choose to be vaccinated at many locations – including personal providers, county health departments and local pharmacies, and at the United Center mass vaccination site. Members of the UIC community located at other sites (Peoria, Rockford, Springfield, Quad Cities and Urbana) may receive a vaccine invitation and may choose to schedule vaccination appointments in Chicago or in their local communities as available. If a second dose is required, it is important that you receive the second dose of vaccine at the same location where you received your first dose.

UI Health Vaccination Locations

UIC’s academic health enterprise, UI Health, is basing its vaccine roll-out on guidance from the Chicago Department of Public Health and continues to lead its vaccination efforts at the Credit Union 1 Arena. This location offers appointment-only vaccinations to eligible UI Health patients, UIC employees and students, and others within our community. Please note that appointments are required and will continue to be limited by vaccine supply.

Credit Union 1 Arena Vaccine Clinic
Location: Credit Union 1 Arena, 525 S. Racine

APPOINTMENT REQUIRED

Additionally, UIC students and employees that reside in Protect Chicago Plus neighborhoods may be eligible to receive the vaccine at Mile Square Englewood, Mile Square Back of the Yards, and other locations in the coming month.  For more information about scheduling your appointment at these clinics, please visit UI Health’s vaccine website.

Making an Appointment

Vaccination appointments are required.  In the coming week, UI Health will place an order for COVID-19 vaccination for all remaining UIC employees, including graduate assistants. An email invitation will be sent to each employee to set up an appointment through Epic/MyChart, the patient electronic health record portal used by UI Health.  You may then choose to accept the invitation to schedule a vaccination appointment as soon as appointment times are available, or at any time in the future when you are ready. Depending on vaccine supply, appointments may be limited initially but it is anticipated that more appointments will be available the week of March 29^th.

To ensure you receive prompt communication about making your vaccine appointment, please verify that you are able to login to MyChart. If you are unable to login to MyChart, call 844-906-9844 for an activation code to log-in as a new user and create a MyChart account.

More information about vaccine appointments, location information or additional FAQs can be found on-line at vaccine.uihealth.care.

Know the Facts

We strongly encourage anyone who is able to schedule an appointment to do so for the health and well-being of our entire community.

Although the COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective, they are not 100% effective and may not protect against asymptomatic transmission. Therefore, everyone must continue to participate in mandatory on-campus saliva testing, wear a mask, wash/sanitize hands often, and maintain physical distance until there is more broad community immunity from vaccination to prevent transmission.

Fully vaccinated individuals are not required to quarantine after an exposure as long as they are asymptomatic, this includes personal domestic travel. However, individuals who travel out of state, who experience symptoms of COVID-19, who test positive for COVID-19 or who have close contact with someone who has COVID-19, should inform the campus by using the UIC COVID-19 reporting decision tool.

More information about the safety and efficacy of the available COVID-19 vaccines is available on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s website.

Up Next

If you are a student who does not meet specific age-, medical-, or job-criteria, you will be eligible to receive a vaccine in phase 2, beginning in mid-April or early May. If you have any questions, please send an email to covidvaccine@uic.edu.

Sincerely,

Robert Barish, MD, MBA
Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs

Susan Bleasdale, MD
Acting Chief Quality Officer and Medical Director, Infection Prevention and Control