From: Joel Martin Malina Sent: Monday, December 20, 2021 2:50 PM To: Paul V. Sheridan Subject: Re: Cornell University reports more than 900 Covid-19 cases this week. Many are Omicron variant cases in fully vaccinated students Hi, Paul. Thanks for the follow up phone call. Here are the answers to your questions: 1. We do not currently know much about the extent of Omicron in our recent COVID cases. Out of the 1000+ positive cases, less than 200 have been evaluated for Omicron at this point. 2. The Cornell Coronavirus Testing Lab has used a threshold of 45 to report as undetected throughout the program. It is also important to remember that for most samples the lab does two steps. It first creates and tests a pool of 5 samples. If the pool is undetected all 5 are reported as undetected. If the pool is detected, the pool is deconvoluted and individual samples are tested to determine if one or more are positive. The lab has many quality control steps in place to make sure results are accurate including a confirmation step for samples with very high Ct values. Joel From: "Paul V. Sheridan" Date: Wednesday, December 15, 2021 at 3:27 PM To: Joel Malina Subject: Cornell University reports more than 900 Covid-19 cases this week. Many are Omicron variant cases in fully vaccinated students Joel: Thank you for taking my call; the preliminary questions as promised in an email form (that you were not privy to, etc.). Referencing the following four preliminary links: https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/us/cornell-university-covid-cases/index.html https://statements.cornell.edu/2021/20211214-LTBmB1-ithaca-alert.cfm https://www.thecollegefix.com/despite-95-vaccination-rate-cornell-today-has-five-times-more-covid-cases-than-it-did-this-time-last-year/ https://universityrelations.cornell.edu/ (1) How many of the students and or staff that tested “positive” for Omicron were NOT vaccinated. (2) What is the Cycle Threshold Value being deployed in the mandatory student / staff PCR testing at Cornell; historically and currently. I will call you with follow-ups shortly. Paul V. Sheridan Courtesy list available upon request. Joel Malina Vice President for University Relations Cornell University 607-255-9029 (o) R E D A C T E D (m) joel.malina@cornell.edu https://cornell.edu/glorious-to-view