The University of Notre Dame abruptly canceled all classes in person on Tuesday night and moved to a minimum of two weeks after full online instruction, the last college to struggle with reopening its campus amid the highly contagious pandemic.
On Monday, Notre Dame – one of the richest and most prestigious religious colleges in the country – reported 80 new confirmed coronavirus infections, bringing the school’s total number of cases to 147 since the South Bend, Indiana, campus on August 3 class for persons. according to the university’s website. Monday’s test data show a 19.1% positivity rate, almost four times the rate recommended by the World Health Organization for states to reopen.
University officials have linked the rise of infections to a party off-campus, where students did not wear masks and social distance was not practiced. Per university policy, the party’s hosts could be “endangered.”[d] their ability to remain a part of the university community. “
“The virus is a formidable enemy,” Father John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame, said in a statement. “Last week it won. Let’s let us as the fighting Irish come together to contain it.”
Notre Dame is among a handful of schools that find it difficult to contain the virus while conducting personal learning. Hundreds of institutions, including Smith College and the entire state system of California State University, have personally removed curricula as coronavirus hotspots have sprung up across the country. Others, such as Brown University and the University of Maryland, have returned start dates. After only being on campus for a week, the University of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill abruptly dropped out of personal classes on Monday, relocating all of its undergraduate classes online to 130 students in the last week positive testing for the coronavirus.
As of August 14, nearly a quarter of colleges and universities conducted their heart semester in primarily as fully personal, and 32% of schools were primarily as fully online, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
At Notre Dame, cases could be even higher than what the university reported. Students told CBS South Bend affiliate WSBT-TV that the COVID-19 school’s test program lacked promises made earlier this summer.
For now, Notre Dame plans to keep its campus open, even as cases increase and students worry.
“It should be remote at this point,” Duncan Donahue, a junior, told WSBT-TV. “I think we have a week of exponential growth in terms of cases on campus, and with the lack of testing, I personally do not believe the university has it under control.”
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