Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

At UNLV, 90% of employees vaccinated as deadline approaches

General Public Vaccinations at UNLV

Wade Vandervort

A person receives the COVID-19 vaccination at UNLV, Monday, April 5, 2021.

Fewer than one in 10 UNLV employees remains unvaccinated against COVID-19 without an exemption, as a deadline approaches this week for all state employees to be vaccinated or face firing.

According to the Nevada System of Higher Education, 8,450 of UNLV’s 9,344 employees, about 90%, were vaccinated as of today. Of the remainder, 178 had approved religious or medical exemptions, leaving 716, or about 8% of university staff, without the shot or a waiver.

The deadline is Wednesday. That’s when notices of termination will go out to the unvaccinated who don’t have exemptions, saying they will be fired as of Dec. 31, although employees with open waiver requests will be stayed. NSHE’s human resources department previously sent out warnings and “notices of non-compliance” to workers who had not submitted vaccination records, according to Board of Regents policy.

UNLV has the most unvaccinated, unexempted employees across NSHE, but it’s also the largest of the state’s eight public colleges and universities. Proportionally, UNLV’s employees are more compliant than at five of their peer institutions. Institution-level compliance ranges from about 84% at Great Basin College in Elko to 97% at Desert Research Institute, which has campuses in Las Vegas and Reno.

Additionally, Nevada State College checked in at 90% vaccinated and College of Southern Nevada at 85%. Overall, 92% of NSHE employees were vaccinated as of today.

Systemwide, that leaves 1,504 workers unvaccinated without an exemption.