The University of California, Riverside, where US universities have returned to online classes due to a surge in COVID-19 cases

Riverside, CA-Dozens of U.S. colleges are moving classes online again, at least for the first week of the semester, due to a surge in COVID-19 cases shortly before students return from winter vacation. .. If the wave of infection doesn’t subside quickly, it will be longer.

At the University of California, Riverside, students can return on Monday, but face a two-week online class. They are also required to quarantine for 5 days while undergoing two virus tests.

It’s the first time the school has moved completely to a remote location since last spring, but Prime Minister Kim Wilcox said it’s the best way to prevent the virus from spreading after students return from their vacation trip. rice field.

“We think it’s about rebuilding our bubble,” he said. “It gives us the opportunity to reset things and hopefully turn them off and run.”

Harvard University will move classes online for the first three weeks of the New Year and return to campus in late January. The University of Chicago has postponed the start of a new semester and is holding the first two weeks online. Some others, such as Michigan State University, have invited students to campus, but have started classes online.

Many universities want to exceed the peak of the national surge caused by the highly contagious variant of Omicron for an extra week or two. Still, the surge has cast uncertainty over the semester that many have expected to be closest to normal since the beginning of the pandemic.

For some students, starting the term remotely is becoming more commonplace-many universities used the strategy last year in a wave of incidents. However, some are afraid that the latest shifts can extend well beyond a week or two.

Jake Maynard, a student at George Washington University in the capital, said a week of online classes was okay, but more than that, he hoped authorities would trust booster shots and provide a traditional college experience. I’m out.

He had already taken a year of online learning and said it “did not work”, which he didn’t expect from a school that would cost more than $ 50,000 a year.

“I’m a junior, but about half of my schooling experience was online,” said Maynard, 20, of Ellicott City, Maryland. “You lose much of what makes school a school.”

The university has been inviting students to campus since Monday, but classes will be held online until January 18th, as staff will strengthen virus testing and isolate infected students. The school has more than doubled the quarantine space and extended the deadline for new booster shot requirements for Omicron by three weeks.

Dr. Ringoldman, Dean of the Department of Public Health in George Washington, said:

The university was among many who saw a surge in infectious diseases the day before winter vacation. The campus recorded an average of more than 80 cases per day in the final week, but most of the fall was a few per day. Recent cases were mild, but almost all were students who received at least two COVID-19 vaccines.

Officials “know that it may not be possible,” Goldman said of the target date for mid-January to resume face-to-face learning.

To date, more than 70 universities in 26 states have started the term online, and other universities are considering it. Many people in motion today use a quarter system that starts earlier than a system with a semester.

Many of the people migrating online are at recent virus hotspots such as George Washington, Yale, Colombia on the east coast, Wayne State University in Detroit, and Northwestern University near Chicago. This list also includes most of the University of California campus and Rice University in Houston.

Some other universities are postponing new semesters without offering remote classes. Syracuse University delayed the semester by a week, citing the prediction that the first three weeks of January would be “the most challenging of this surge.”

Others are advancing face-to-face learning, saying that masks and booster shots have a low health risk.

At Northeastern University in Boston, where the number of schools in need of boosters is increasing, students are returning as planned. Schools are shifting their focus from preventing all incidents to avoiding serious illnesses and hospitalizations, according to people familiar with the matter.

“When we enter this endemic stage of a pandemic, our job is not to let COVID control us, but to continue to effectively control COVID,” said the President and Senior Learning Officer. Vice President Ken Henderson said in a message to the campus.

The move is praised by Republican Governor Charlie Baker, who said that while COVID-19 poses little risk to college students, “long-term isolation is a very real risk to their growth and mental health.” Collected.

The University of Florida will return to face-to-face learning at the beginning of the semester, despite a request from the teachers’ union to teach remotely for the first three weeks.

Paul Ortiz, head of the Florida Union School campus, said older teachers are at higher risk, especially if there is no obligation for masks and vaccines outlawed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. I said I would.

“We don’t want our campus to be a super-spreader,” Ortiz said. “Currently, there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of stress.”

At some universities starting from remote areas, officials say they promise to return to the classroom quickly.

The 50,000 student campus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will resume face-to-face lessons after a week of online instruction. Students are encouraged to return to their first week, so they can be tested for the virus twice. This allows you to resume face-to-face activity if the test result is negative.

“Every semester, it soared when students returned,” said university spokesman Robin Koehler. “We want to make sure we are on top of it so that we can crush it as soon as possible.”