UC Santa Cruz To Go Remote For Spring Quarter: Coronavirus

SANTA CRUZ, CA — The University of California, Santa Cruz announced Friday that it will conduct spring quarter classes and final exams remotely due to concerns about the new coronavirus. Students who have already left their dorms for their permanent residences are asked to remain there.

Previously UC Santa Cruz planned to resume in-person instruction in April. The changes are being made in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus, wrote Chancellor Cynthia Lariva Friday in a letter to the campus community.

"Since I last wrote to you on Tuesday, additional information has emerged about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and its rapid spread," she said in the letter. "It is a crisis of enormous scale and human impact, the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes."

No labs or studio courses will meet prior to April 6.

UC Santa Cruz will have an update on its decision by March 20.

The campus will remain open, with most student services such as counseling and advising taking places over web conferencing platform Zoom. Student housing, dining, health services, the library and research support operations will stay open with some changes in operations, Lariva wrote.

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"I am confident that together we will reach the other side of this upheaval, and I look forward to the time when our community will again be able to come together in person," she wrote.

More information about coronavirus from UC Santa Cruz can be found here.

Thursday night Santa Cruz County announced a total of seven coronavirus cases were confirmed in the community.

Last week county health officials issued a Local Health Emergency for the new coronavirus due to concerns about its spread in neighboring counties and a need to prepare for a potential outbreak.

Anyone with concerns about their health should contact their doctor or call 211 to find a local clinic. The county encourages the public to visit santacruzhealth.org/coronavirus for local updates and links to important CDC updates.

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Wednesday to provide additional resources, prevent price gouging and help the state better prepare for the virus's spread.

The emergency declaration followed the first known coronavirus-related death in California — an elderly Placer County resident who was exposed to the virus on a Grand Princess cruise Feb. 11-21 from San Francisco to Mexico and back.

Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that include the common cold as well as much more serious diseases. The strain that emerged in China in late 2019, now called COVID-19, is related to others that have caused serious outbreaks in recent years, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS).

The first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. was on Jan. 21. The disease, which apparently originated in animals, is now transferring from person to person, although the mechanism is not yet fully understood. Its symptoms include fever, coughing and shortness of breath, and many patients develop pneumonia. There is as yet no vaccine against COVID-19 it and no antiviral treatment.

According to the CDC, the best way of preventing the disease is to avoid close contact with people who are sick, to avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands, to wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, and to use a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol if soap and water are not available.

To avoid spreading any respiratory illness, the CDC recommends staying at home when you are sick, covering your cough or sneeze with a tissue and throwing the tissue in the trash, cleaning and disinfecting frequently touched objects and surfaces.

Read more about the coronavirus outbreak here on the CDC website.