Daily Health Check

Students who live on campus, those who live off campus but have one or more in-person classes, student employees/volunteers working on campus, students who utilize on-campus services (e.g., dining, recreation facilities and libraries), and all other students who live in Erie or Niagara counties must complete the Daily Health Check every day, including weekends and holidays, whether or not they plan to visit campus on a given day.

All faculty, staff and volunteer faculty/staff who come to a UB or UBMD campus must also complete the Daily Health Check.

Volunteers, adjunct faculty, tenants/affiliates residing in UB facilities, vendors, visitors and invited guests to campus who are otherwise not affiliated with the university are required to complete the Daily Health Check prior to their arrival on campus.

Please note that UB students, faculty and staff who are not required to complete the Daily Health Check are strongly encouraged to do so out of concern for their personal health and the health of the entire community.

The Daily Health Check is an important part of the campus Health and Safety Guidelines. Together with wearing a face covering, maintaining physical distance, washing hands and staying home when sick, daily health screenings like this one are an effective way to help prevent the spread of the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The Daily Health Check helps UB gauge the health of the UB community and provide immediate support as needed. Through the Daily Health Check, UB health officials receive critical data that serves as our first early warning signal for the possible development of new infections in the UB community. The Daily Health Check also enables timely diagnosis of new cases and initiation of care as needed, and assists in preventing further spread of the virus, thereby increasing the ability of health officials to better protect everyone.

In addition to providing the university with real-time data, the tool offers users helpful instructions and authoritative information customized to their situation and based on that day’s responses.

COVID-19 impacts everyone. The health and safety of the campus community depends on your participation.

Individuals who complete a daily health attestation for another organization, such as a hospital or health care facility, are not required to participate in UB’s Daily Health Check, but are asked to do so.

Yes, in addition to observing all other campus health and safety guidelines (i.e., wearing a face covering, practicing physical distancing, hand washing, etc.), all individuals who are required to complete the Daily Health Check must continue to do so whether or not they have been fully vaccinated.­­

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), individuals are considered fully vaccinated at least two weeks after receiving the last required dose of their specific vaccine series. For example, individuals who receive a two-dose vaccine (e.g., Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech) are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the second dose in the series, whereas individuals who receive a single-dose vaccine (e.g., Johnson & Johnson) are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their first dose.

You should complete the Daily Health Check early in your day. If you plan to be on campus on a given day, you must complete the Daily Health Check before you arrive.

Students living on campus must complete the Daily Health Check before leaving their residence hall for the day.

Signing up for text message notifications makes it easy to complete your Daily Health Check. You’ll receive a reminder between 7-8 a.m. with a link for that day.

After being cleared for on-campus activity, you will receive an access pass for that day. 

The Daily Health Check is a chat messaging interface, in which the program asks users specific questions about their recent history and current status in regard to COVID-19. The virtual screener currently runs in a web browser.

The Daily Health Check will ask, at minimum, whether the participant:

• Has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
  
• Has tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in the past 10 days.
• Has experienced any COVID-19 symptoms in the past 10 days.
• Has had contact with a confirmed or suspected COVID-19 case in the past 14 days.
• Has returned to New York State within the past 10 days from a location on New York State’s COVID-19 Travel Advisory list after having stayed in that location for more than 24 hours (round-trip Canadian travel excluded).

If a user has symptoms consistent with COVID-19 or has been exposed to someone with established infection, the Daily Health Check will outline appropriate next steps, including, in the following order, where to get tested, when to contact a health care professional and how to quarantine pending test results. It will then provide important contact details. Finally, the individual will receive a secure email with similar information to guide next steps.

Please retake the Daily Health Check as soon as you are able and provide the correct answers. Your most recent attestation will overwrite your prior submission. Student Health and Human Resources receive real-time notifications for those who indicate a health risk, so you may receive a follow-up email. In your reply, indicate that you retook the attestation to reflect correct responses.

In order to correct personal information for text notifications, you must unsubscribe within the chatbot on your cell phone and register again with the correct information, as follows:

1. Log in to the chatbot using the first three letters of your last name and birth year.
2. Click “Unsubscribe” in the menu (☰) in the upper right corner of the browser window.
3. Select “Yes, discontinue text reminders.”
4. Go directly to the Daily Health Check to create a new account with the correct information. Do not click on a link from a previous text message.

In October 2020, the Daily Health Check was updated to include text message notifications and expanded personalization options. As part of this update, the tool now requires first and last name, email address, 8-digit person number, UBITName, 10-digit mobile phone number and year of birth.

No matter how users complete their Daily Health Check, their individual information is always kept confidential and secure in accordance with all applicable data privacy laws. Data will only be used for the purposes of screening, tracking and contact tracing, if needed, to preserve the health and safety of the UB community. Only a small group of campus leaders have access to the data for these limited purposes, and personally identifiable information is not transferred to other individuals outside this group. Summary data may be reported but will not include any individual personal identifiers.

LifeLink, UB’s partner in deploying the Daily Health Check, underwent a rigorous vetting process to demonstrate that they could meet the university’s stringent privacy and data protection requirements. As part of the agreement with UB, LifeLink has no claim to ownership of any UB user data and is contractually obligated to protect that data in accordance with industry standards, which include a network firewall, intrusion detection technology and regular security vulnerability assessments. For more information, LifeLink provides a webpage on their privacy policy.

When you physically come to campus to live, work, dine, attend classes or activities, or visit the library, you are demonstrating that you have completed the Daily Health Check and you attest, to the best of your knowledge, that you do not have COVID-19 infection, symptoms suggestive of COVID-19 or exposure to COVID-19, and that you have not returned to New York State within the past 10 days from a location on New York State’s COVID-19 Travel Advisory list.

During the spring ’21 semester, expect campus officials to ask more frequently for proof of Daily Health Check completion upon your entry into testing sites, labs, recreation facilities and other locations. If you’re cleared to come to campus, make sure you save a copy of that day’s access pass to present when asked. For a convenient option to retain proof of completion, consider taking a screenshot of your access pass and saving it to your device.

If students living, working or taking classes on campus fail to complete the Daily Health Check, they will receive a series of warnings culminating in administrative action, which will include a mandatory public health education course.

Students seeking additional information about compliance should visit the Public Health Behavior Expectations page from Student Life.

Per New York State Department of Health guidance, employees are required to complete the Daily Health Check (according to their individual obligation) and adhere to all other aspects of the Health and Safety Guidelines.

As with other parts of the Health and Safety Guidelines, any UB faculty member, staff person or student who has concerns about compliance or witnesses cases of noncompliance may report them via this website.