Students to complete COVID-19 home testing prior to return on campus
Before arriving on campus, Notre Dame students will be required to provide a specimen for a COVID-19 PCR test, the coronavirus response unit said in an email Wednesday.Students will be mailed a home collection kit to their current place of residence by LabCorp, who will process the results. Specimen collection will be staggered depending on when students plan to arrive on campus, and by July 15, all students will be notified by when they must complete their test.“The kit package will include a set of instructions for how to collect a home specimen from the anterior nasal passage and how to send it back to LabCorp for processing,” Christine Caron Gebhardt, assistant vice president for student services and Tracy Skibins, senior director of emergency management, said in the email.The specimen must be returned to a FedEx Drop Box on the same day as collection. Otherwise, it cannot be processed and students will be charged a $75 replacement fee.LabCorp will provide University Health Services (UHS) with the results, and once they are confirmed, students will receive an email to view the test results. Students who test negative will be cleared to return to campus.“UHS will let Residential Life know the on-campus students who are cleared to return to campus, though test results will not be shared,” the email said. “Students moving on-campus will receive a confirmation email from Residential Life confirming their move-in appointment.”Students who test positive may not return to campus even if they are asymptomatic, and UHS will contact these students for clearance.“If you become ill with symptoms of COVID-19 or are exposed to someone with COVID-19 between the time of your test and your arrival, you must delay travel and contact your health care provider for evaluation,” the email said.Tags: coronavirus response unit, COVID-19, pre matriculation
Dutch pensions watchdog DNB cannot stop cross-border pension transfers to another EU member state if the reason given for this transfer is more flexibility, according to Wouter Koolmees, the Netherlands’ minister for social affairs.All member states have to comply with a set of minimum requirements, which may result in pension schemes from the Netherlands ending up in a country where a higher discount rate is applied, he said. Koolmees was responding to questions from members of parliament about the transfer of the pension fund of Aon Hewitt Netherlands to the United Pensions vehicle in Belgium. United Pensions’ discount rate for valuing liabilities is higher than the current discount rate in the Netherlands. The entitlements of pensioners would thereby be discounted at a rate of 3.5%. This figure is based on the expected return on the same composition as the Dutch investment portfolio. A move of the accrued pensions from the Netherlands to Belgium will result in a coverage ratio that is 11 percentage points higher. Dutch MPs Pieter Omtzigt of the Christian Democrats and Martin van Rooijen of the Seniors’ party had demanded clarification on this matter. In his reply, Koolmees noted that the Netherlands did not consider a discount rate of 3.5% based on the expected return to be prudent. “Belgium has chosen a different interpretation of the financial assessment framework, including a different interpretation of the discount rate,” said Koolmees.This was possible because European rules only stipulated a minimum and maximum discount rate, he added. The Netherlands did not want to further harmonise these rules.The minister indicated he agreed that the actuarial rate for the group of pensioners in the Netherlands was around 1%, as assumed by Omtzigt.However, nothing could be done, according to Koolmees. The Belgian assessment framework complied with EU legislation, he noted, although it based itself more on principles than rules, and hence allowed “a lot of room for own interpretation by the pension provider or the employer”.When an assessment framework met the minimum requirements of the EU pension fund directive, IORP II, differences with the state of play in the Netherlands could not be a reason to stop a collective pension transfer. DNB would not be allowed to block a transfer due to supervisory arbitrage, Koolmees confirmed.IORP II, which the Netherlands is currently in the process of adopting in national law, would not change this.