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 Notre Dame University President John Jenkins announced the decision
after the prestigious Catholic university near South Bend, Indiana,
reported a spike of 80 positive test results on Monday, taking the
total number of confirmed cases to 147 since Aug. 3, according to
the university's website.
The results from 418 tests represented a positivity rate of 19
percent at the school with overall positivity at around 16 percent
since Aug. 3.
Notre Dame will close all public spaces on campus, restrict
residence halls to residents only and limit gatherings to ten people
always wearing masks, Jenkins said in an online video presentation.
"If these steps are not successful we will have to send students
home as we did last spring," Jenkins said, adding the university's
contact tracing analysis indicated most infections were from
off-campus gatherings.
Before returning to campus all students were tested - only 33 of
nearly 12,000 were positive, a rate of only 0.28 percent. The
university did not immediately respond to a request for further
comment on the rise in cases.
The university, with about 8,600 undergraduates, had most students
and faculty on campus by Aug. 10 with restrictions on travel, events
and visitors.
LINING UP FOR TESTING
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said Monday it was
suspending in-person instruction for undergraduates in a just a week
after classes began. That school also has been struggling with
coronavirus clusters.
Schools and colleges across the United States have been grappling
with how and when to reopen in the middle of a pandemic.
In New York City, once the center of the U.S. pandemic, hundreds of
New York University students and staff waited in line outside a
white tent on Tuesday for coronavirus testing ahead of some classes
resuming in early September.
NYU is testing students who have chosen in-person learning, with
classes for undergraduates beginning on Sept. 2. The university in
lower Manhattan is also giving students the options of remote
learning or a blended program between the two.
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New York now has an infection rate below 1%, a benchmark for restarting certain
activities coupled with social distancing and mask wearing.
In the Oklahoma university town of Stillwater, the city council was considering
a response to viral videos showing crowded bars and clubs near Oklahoma State
University, where in-person classes began on Aug. 17.
The videos emerged as Mayor Will Joyce opposed the annual Weedstock music
festival set to begin on Thursday outside the town, expected to attract
thousands.
EASING INTO YEAR
Schools in parts of the country that have a coronavirus infection positivity
rate of more than 10% would be better off easing into the new academic year with
virtual classrooms, Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious diseases expert, said
on Tuesday.
Fauci said primary and secondary schools as a default position should try and
reopen for the psychological health of children, but no single approach should
apply to every school in the country.
"To make a statement on one side vs the other and take the country as a whole
won't work — we're so heterogeneous with the infections," Fauci told a virtual
Healthline conference.
Some U.S. schools have closed almost as quickly as they welcomed back students
as the level of new cases per day remains high in many states, including
California, Florida and Texas.
The United States has more than 5 million cases of confirmed coronavirus
infections, the highest in the world, according to a Reuters tally, with more
than 170,000 reported fatalities.
(Reporting by Mike Segar and Gabriella Borter in New York; additional reporting
by Andrew Hay; Writing by Grant McCool; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Bill
Tarrant)
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