The University of Notre Dame announced on Tuesday that, amid rising coronavirus cases, it will be moving its undergraduate classes online. The school was one of the first colleges this summer to commit to in-person fall classes.
“The objective of these temporary restrictions is to contain the spread of the virus so we can get back to in-person instruction,” President John Jenkins said in an address streamed to students and faculty. “If these steps are not successful, we will have to send students home, as we did last spring.”
The school originally planned to send all on the campus home but instead opted to close down most of the campus, Jenkins said. The school for the next two weeks will keep classes online and restrict off-campus students from entering. Gatherings are limited to 10 people, down from 20.
The school, which began tracking the disease’s spread on Aug. 3, recorded 80 new cases on Tuesday, a record since students began returning to campus. The school now has a nearly 20% positive rate, with 147 cases overall.
A large number of the cases were linked to off-campus parties, Jenkins said.
The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill suspended classes one week into the semester after a similar outbreak.
Jenkins said in May that Notre Dame would reopen in the fall and would adapt to circumstances as they change.
“Bringing our students back is, in effect, assembling a small city of people from many parts of the nation and the world, who may bring with them pathogens to which they have been exposed,” Jenkins said at the time. “We recognize the challenge, but we believe it is one we can meet.”
