YOUNG GETTING INFECTED
More US colleges were grappling with high numbers of students testing positive for the coronavirus just days into the start of the new semester after some universities rolled back their campus reopening plans in recent weeks.
The University of Alabama on Monday reported that more than 550 people across its campuses had tested positive for Covid-19 since it resumed in-person classes on Aug 19. Most of those infected were students, faculty and staff at the university's main campus in Tuscaloosa.
Citing a "dramatic increase" in coronavirus cases on campus, the mayor of Tuscaloosa issued an executive order on Monday ordering bars to shut down for 14 days and placing restrictions on other establishments.
"Several students who tested positive for Covid-19 have chosen to go home to isolate," Ms Kellee Reinhart, the university's vice-chancellor for communications, told Reuters in an e-mail.
The university has conducted more than 46,000 tests, according to a dashboard it released this week, and the positivity rate stood at about 1 per cent. The number of positive cases doesn't include the 400 students who tested positive upon returning to University of Alabama campuses before classes began the previous week.
Alabama is not alone in scrambling to deal with Covid-19 college outbreaks. The University of Southern California (USC), which resumed education nearly entirely online on Aug 17, on Monday said that more than 100 students at the University Park Campus in Los Angeles were in a 14-day quarantine after exposure to the virus.
"USC Student Health has received an alarming increase in the number of Covid-19 cases in students in the University Park Campus community," the university said in a statement, adding that all cases were related to students in "off-campus living environments".
Ohio State University, where classes resumed on Tuesday, this week issued more than 200 interim suspensions for students following a string of large parties, according to media reports. The previous week, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill cancelled in-class instruction after cases shot up dramatically.
REUTERS