BREAKING: UNC Chapel Hill will pivot to all-remote instruction for undergraduates rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, just 1 week after classes began— 177 new cases confirmed among students. Welp—that in-campus experiment didn’t last long. #COVID19 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/unc-chapel-hill-coronavirus-cluster/2020/08/17/8ebce060-e0ab-11ea-8181-606e603bb1c4_story.html

2) “Clusters of cases had popped up in three residence halls and a fraternity house at UNC-Chapel Hill in the first week of the fall term, sending students into isolation and quarantine rooms and raising faculty worries about how far the dangerous pathogen will spread on campus.”

4) “In the week before class started Aug. 10 at UNC-Chapel Hill, 10 students and one employee tested positive. But clusters of cases piled up in the residences known as Granville Towers, Ehringhaus and Hinton James, as well as the Sigma Nu fraternity house.”

4b) “After only 1 week of campus operations, with growing numbers of clusters & insufficient control over off-campus behavior of students (and others), it is time for an off-ramp,” dean of public health at UNC-Chapel Hill. “We have tried to make this work, but it is not working.”

5) “Faculty, too, were calling for a review of the situation.
“The fact that it is happening this early in the school year, just a week into classes, has everyone quite concerned and quite alarmed, quite frankly,” said Mimi V. Chapman, chair of the UNC-Chapel Hill faculty.”

6) “But they were deeply concerned about gatherings off campus. The UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor, Guskiewicz, wrote a letter recently warning fraternities and sororities and other groups that they must follow health rules.

7) “One first-year student, who declined to give her name for privacy reasons, said she had been in quarantine since Thursday night. This student said the problem arose because she had breakfast one day just off campus with a classmate who later tested positive.

8) ““I was definitely worried. I kind of broke down when I first got here.” She said her meals are delivered: turkey sandwich for lunch, grilled chicken for dinner, and supply of Pop-Tarts, oatmeal and cans of soup. “I was told I could only leave if I need a breath of fresh air”

9) Ps. Here was today’s oped in the campus newspaper that called it a ‘clusterfuck’

10) Positivity soared in the first week of classes too. From 2.6% to 13.6%. https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1295502667687628800?s=21 https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1295502667687628800