The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/outbreak/)
Despite 201 new positive cases in one week, Cornell University administration sent an email to the Cornell community reinforcing their commitment to keeping the semester in person, citing low chances of transmission in classes.
The positive test result came two days after Tompkins County confirmed its first case of the fast-spreading virus on Saturday morning. That individual was affiliated with Ithaca College.
President Martha E. Pollack announced that the University would suspend all classes as of Friday at 5 p.m. in Ithaca, amid widespread concerns over the COVID-19 outbreak. Virtual instruction is set to begin April 6.
The historic move — which will likely have implications on everything from housing to graduation plans — leaves in its wake a reeling campus, with students, faculty and administrators alike forced to traverse uncharted territory.
A Cornell student presented symptoms that mirror the novel coronavirus strain — which has afflicted over 17,000 people internationally, Ryan Lombardi announced in an email. It is not confirmed that the student has coronavirus.
As I was packing up on Friday, preparing myself for an unusually tiresome journey back to Ithaca totaling about three days on the road with three layovers, my phone buzzed: the U.S. Center for Disease Control announced that it would begin screening passengers arriving from Wuhan, China at Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco airports. Given my first layover in L.A.— lasting an unbelievably long twelve hours and giving me an excuse to visit Santa Monica for a bit— I was quite worried. For one, though I did not visit Wuhan this winter break, I was reminded of the panic after the West Africa Ebola epidemic back in 2013, when an overreaction caused a public health crisis in the United States, putting many African passengers under duress. Given the tense political climate between the U.S. and China, who knows there won’t be a repeat? A second, perhaps more foreboding concern, underlies my thoughts: Is the outbreak really this bad?
More than a year after a sweeping bacterial outbreak led Cornell Dining — along with tens of thousands of other restaurants nationwide — to throw out all of its romaine lettuce, E.coli has returned, once again prompting concerns over how to safely consume lettuce.