The University of Notre Dame closed staff classes on Tuesday, eight days after the school’s fall semester began and after 146 students and a staff member tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said.
The two-week suspension, which is effective Wednesday for the school’s 12,000 students, came a day after the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill made a similar announcement and as Michigan State University ordered undergrads Tuesday to stay home “immediately effective” for the rest of the fall.
“The virus is a formidable enemy,” Notre Dame University president John Jenkins said in a news release. ‘Last week it won. Let us come together as the fighting Irish to contain it. ”
Since August 3, 927 people have been tested for the virus and 147 have returned positive results, the school said.
Most of those students were off-campus seniors who contracted the disease at meetings where social distancing rules were not followed and masks were not worn, the school said, with a reference from a contact person.
Not one of the students was hospitalized and the school said it would implement two weeks of distance learning.
In Michigan, the university had not yet begun its heart semester because it abruptly told students to stay away from campus. In a Tuesday letter to students, University President Samuel Stanley Jr. the move to the “current status of the virus in our country – in particular what we see at other institutions as they repopulate their campus communities.”
Distance education at the school will begin Sept. 2, he said.
On Monday, UNC-Chapel Hill became the first university in the United States to leave person classes after reopening for the fall semester on August 10th. Five school workers and 130 students tested positive, the school said.
“Many students, graduates, staff, some faculty members and even the county’s local health department warned that this would happen,” said Lamar Richards, a student chair of the Campus Equality and Student Equity Commission at UNC.
In an open letter, Richards said the “careless and abandoned duty” of the school administration had caused the outbreaks.
Wilson Wong contributed.
